Stargate: Uprising
by Obrusnine
Summary: Kid genius James Parker is discovered by a Theoretical Astrophysicist working for the Stargate program. The Doctor takes it upon himself to teach James about everything he knows, but when he's killed by The Trust, James goes on a journey for revenge that leads to him joining SG-1 and defending the galaxy against an uprising of rebel Jaffa.
1. Chapter 1: Discovered

**Hi everyone, I just want you to know this is a reimagining of a previous fic I started that kind of flopped. I didn't do enough character development for James, so it just wasn't that good. So I started over here, giving him some actual character development before tossing him into the fray. So yes, it is going to be a little while before SG-1 shows up.**

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Stargate: Uprising

Part 1: Mentor

Chapter 1: Discovered

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**February 21****st****, 2000, Colorado Springs, Colorado**

* * *

A small seven-year old James Parker worked silently in a corner away from the other children, trying to appear innocent by playing with simple blocks. He made sure not to make the structure of the blocks to complex or above average and to hang under the radar… to make sure he wasn't noticed as abnormally intelligent.

His parents had told him to do so. If he was noticed, they were sure he'd be abused by others. They wanted him to have a normal childhood not shaped by his intelligence. As it was, they were very aware that the child was a genius.

As he pretended to play with the blocks, he simultaneously worked on highly complex math problems in his head. He made sure to keep attention on his surroundings. He had never fit in well with the other children, but he was relatively good at blending in.

James found it funny that his parents had wanted him to have a normal childhood… but by forcing him to hide his intelligence from others; they had also forced him to isolate himself from other people. He thought this was alright though, as he enjoyed being alone.

He just wished he could study more complex subjects here instead of self-study at his home. The alphabet and basic math were incredibly quaint to him. He liked to use his hands, to create things with his intelligence… but he couldn't here. He felt incredibly stuffed in and trapped in this world he didn't want to be a part of.

But, at the same time, he realized the intelligence of his parent's judgment. It was mandatory that he hide his intelligence from others, because as they said it would be abused. His massive intelligence would no doubt be taken interest in across the nation, and James didn't want the attention, or to have his life consistently directed by others who claimed to help him.

He would be basically suffocated in the world around him. He liked observing the world, changing it, and being a part of it. But he wanted to be able to make his own choices about how he fit in with it, instead of being forced to turn wheels may not want to turn.

So he kept up the charade, no matter how trapped he felt here in this school. Acting like he wasn't thinking on levels far beyond that of his teachers had become second nature to him. When it was done and he was home, he would be able to study and work on the things he wanted to.

* * *

**5 Years Later**

* * *

He sat bored through his history class, in the back and out of sight as usual. He mildly paid attention to what was being taught even though he already knew the contents of what was being told. History was his least favorite subject. He thought it foolish to put so much concentration on the past when the future was so much more important.

He gazed out the window and observed nature. It was winter, and snow coated the outside. James liked snow. He liked how each one was completely different from another. He liked thinking about the individual chemical reactions that created each one. He liked thinking about how everything there could be quantified and explained by science and ingenuity, and how no matter what, there would always be more to discover.

He was glad he had his mind, the one place where he didn't have to keep up the charade. Just because he had to act like the average twelve year-old didn't mean he had to think like one. As the bell rung, he stood and gazed about as the room emptied. He gathered his belongings and travelled to the door silently.

"James." His teacher called. He turned to her.

"Yes Miss Tuesday?" He inquired.

"I urge you to pay more attention in class, I'm sure you'd be able to produce above average grades in tests if you just applied yourself." She said.

"I'll try miss." He said as he turned and left.

He could ace those tests she spoke of, but he deliberately sabotaged himself. He made sure he didn't appear either incredibly stupid or incredibly smart. It was yet another method of flying under the radar.

He turned his thoughts to his next class, it was his favorite. It was computer science; they had thought it smart to expose the students to computer technology this year. It was all grades, not just sixth, which was the one he belonged to.

He didn't like it because of the subject matter, he liked it because it was the one place in the school he could be himself. He thumbed around the USB Thumb Drive in his pocket. It contained plenty of custom macros and programs he had created and coded himself. Initially in the class, he would have to play a high-stakes game to keep what he was doing hidden.

He had had to choose the perfect time to hack into the schools network so he would have enough time to make things look normal again before his teacher or one of his fellow students walked by. Also, every time he chose to mess with the other children's computers or do anything else nefarious he had to time perfectly so they didn't see.

The contents of the flash drive made this easy.

He had programs specifically designed to hack into the schools network and set up his hacked workstation access in a heartbeat. Whenever he was doing something, he could easily press a single button and look perfectly innocent as whatever they were supposed to be doing popped up.

He had hacked all of the lesson plans from his teacher's computers, and had come up with exactly what that button press would bring up on every day all year. He smiled as he thought of how he would mess with the other students today.

As he entered the room, the first thing he noticed was that the teacher was letting someone else sit at his desk as he stood to the side.

The man looked simple enough. He was casually dressed with plain glasses. But James could tell there was something special about him, even if he did not know what. He could not recall anything in the lesson plans about a visitor, yet he was not getting up, so James guessed he was here to stay.

He wondered what the man could be here for, and who he could possibly be. Either way, he sat at his usual seat in the back of the room, and everyone sat away from him. He casually plucked the flash drive from his pocket and slid it into the port as he powered on his computer.

After the class was entirely seated, he ran his programs and was into the schools network with administrative privileges in no time. He also ran a program that kept him anonymous from the rest of the network. If anyone checked on his internal school account, it would still look like he was a normal member on the network with no special privileges.

This was because the anonymity program kept his original account logged in through any available empty terminal in the room while simultaneously logged in with administrative privileges on his current terminal via an account that could not be detected by other computers on the network. In addition, the terminal outputted signals matching their current assignment, so if anyone decided to look at what he was doing, they would see the current assignment being played out.

On days where the assignments were not normal, the anonymity program would allow him to set up other tasks for it to do depending on whatever new tasks they were supposed to be working on. In addition, he could switch which one he was controlling on his current terminal on a whim.

With the administrative privileges, he could spy on what everyone else was doing as well as access private files on the home drives of every registered account on the computers network. He could also seize control of computers that were logged in, upload programs and such, and access files on any terminals that were powered on.

Private computers weren't even safe, as he could hack into any one of them in a matter of minutes as long as it was connected to the network. He smiled as he thought over today's possibilities, and wondered who the man could possibly be.

He got his answer as his teacher began to speak.

"Hello class." Mister Woodwark said.

"Hello Mister Woodwark." The class responded.

"As you can see class, we have a guest here today." Mister Woodwark said. "His name is Doctor Andrew Laskin; he works up in Cheyenne Mountain. He's a Theoretical Astrophysicist working for the Air Force."

_What the? Why would a Theoretical Astrophysicist be working at NORAD? _ James wondered. _They only track missiles… but this guy would be perfect for extremely high-level research. _

As the rest of the class greeted the Doctor, and he responded in kind, James was already on a web browser and going to Google. He had quickly pulled up everything the internet had on the good doctor. He had graduated with a PhD in Theoretical Astrophysics from MIT. He also had a PhD in Computer Science and a Master's in Web Design.

He supposed the doctor could be working on NORAD's computers, but then why would he have been introduced by their teacher as a Theoretical Astrophysicist first and foremost? That appeared far too suspicious.

James decided he needed to know more.

He quickly pulled up the United States Air Force's official website and found an extraneous program on his flash drive. James had found that most official websites had backdoors that could be accessed by official personnel that led to the stuff the people who maintained the website don't want you to see. He had invented this program to find them.

He ran the program and found a few backdoors. They were heavily encrypted, James expected no less from the military, and were coupled with heavy identification details. He spent the next few minutes cracking code so he could infiltrate the Air Force's network beyond this point.

As he did this, Doctor Laskin opened and powered on his laptop computer and hooked it into a network jack. James caught this on the edge of his eye.

Then, without even touching the computer he had set up, he stood and began talking to the class about computers and how they work. James found it incredibly suspicious how the Doctor had just turned his computer on for nothing, but kept working. He quickly noticed that both the Doctor and the teacher seemed to be intentionally ignoring him to as he drummed away at his keyboard.

He didn't like it, but he kept on working regardless.

After several minutes of work, he finally managed to infiltrate the system with Air Force Brigadier General level status. He quickly piggybacked off the Air Force's network to Cheyenne Mountain's internal network. As he entered NORAD's systems, he noticed something rather odd. There was another completely separate network from NORAD.

With a cursory investigation, he found that this network was located far below NORAD. On floors of the complex that James knew weren't supposed to exist. His curiosity was piqued, and he checked the systems.

He was quickly blocked with the highest level encryption that James had ever encountered. He scanned thousands of line of computer code with his eyes with complete astonishment. Whatever they had down there, it was something they really wanted to keep secret. He ignored it though, and he proceeded into NORAD's systems to find what he really wanted.

He got into personnel files with little effort, and searched them for Doctor Andrew Laskin. The search function returned no results. He raised an eyebrow and tried again, nothing.

Just as James thought, this Doctor couldn't be working for NORAD. The Air Force was meticulous with their records, if the Doctor was working there, his name would be in the personnel files. But it was nowhere to be seen. He thought back to the other network. He connected the dots and assumed that the Doctor was working on whatever was down there. Something about all this didn't fit. If he was working on some top secret project for the Air Force, what was he doing here giving a lecture to a bunch of sixth-graders?

Wouldn't he have more important duties?

James suddenly remembered the Doctor's computer. He looked up. It was still on and still hooked in to the computers network.

If there was anything to find out about a person, then it was on their personal computers. He switched gears, closing the web browser and scanning the ID's of all of the computers in the room until he found an ID that was clearly out of place. Usually computer ID's were numbers or simple names. But his was just one word. Hello in big capital letters.

_Who names their computer… "Hello"? _James thought. He ignored it and accessed the computer through the network.

It was protected by powerful encryption, even stronger then what he'd found on the Air Force's website. But nowhere near as powerful as what he had seen in the Cheyenne Mountain complex, which would take him months of hard work to crack.

He got to work, and as class neared its end, he finally broke in. He scanned the hard drive, and was completely baffled.

The computer was entirely empty other than a barebones operating system and simple applications. But, there was one text file on the computer's main user's desktop. It was only a few kilobytes, so it could only be one line.

He opened it, and found he was right. But it also scared him, he almost leapt out of his chair in horror, and as it was, his entire face drained of blood. Because the words it said were… "Hello James Parker, we need to talk."

He looked up at the Doctor horrified, and for the first time, the Doctor looked at him, and he winked.


	2. Chapter 2: Life and Death

**Wow, pretty intense chapter. Some reviews would be nice, thanks for reading!**

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Stargate: Uprising

Part 1: Mentor

Chapter 2: Life and Death

* * *

James waited silently, pretending to listen to the Doctor's lesson as class neared its end. He had been caught, no less by someone who worked on a secret project under Cheyenne Mountain. This went way beyond just normal hacking to; he had just broken into the Air Force and viewed classified information. He became sick to his stomach as he thought about whether or not he'd be put away for the rest of his life.

He had never hacked into anything quite so major before. Even for a kid like him, his age alone might not be enough to protect him from disappearing.

Then again, the Doctor had just said he wanted to talk.

_What could he want to talk about? _James wondered.

The answer to his question drew closer as the bell rang. He tried to rush out of his seat, quickly gathering his belongings and shoving his thumb drive into his pocket. He tried to leave, but was stopped in his tracks when the doctor stepped in front of him.

"Not so fast young man, I want to talk to you." He said. He firmly grasped James's shoulder and led him back towards the teacher's desk as the rest of the class left.

"Sir, I'm going to miss my next…" James started.

"Not to worry, you're exempt from classes for the rest of the day my friend." Doctor Laskin said. "You can leave now Mister Woodwark."

"Of course." The teacher said. He left, shutting the door behind him.

"What's this all about Doctor Laskin? I didn't do anything." James said defensively.

"Trying to play innocent isn't going to work with me James; we have a high-definition video recording of what you did on both of the terminals that you had in use. Very clever trick there, make it look like you're actually working with the press of a button."

James gulped.

"Honestly James, it was brilliant work. You broke through very serious encryption, both on the Air Force website and on my own personal computer. We've been watching you for a while, you keep yourself hidden well, but your signals are far too easy to track back to the source." Doctor Laskin said. "In addition to being extremely skilled with computers, you are quite the inventor. The team that infiltrated your house took pictures of quite good looking devices."

"What do you want from me?" James asked.

"I'm getting to that… You know, you make it a bit too easy to find you amongst the crowd of grades around here by an experienced observer. All of your grade averages always total 79, exactly 79. The grades that create those averages are always different, but you always manage to get exactly 79. That requires quite intense familiarity with any subject matter at hand. But the fact that it's always 79 makes you obvious.

"Honestly, you're a genius, but you aren't very good at covering your tracks."

"Even with all of that, how did you find me?"

"You've poked around countless secure networks throughout the years, not just your schools internal networks, although we have caught you messing around with those as well. Every time we tracked the origin of the signal, it came back here to this school. Extremely clever only hacking into secure networks at your school, makes it hard to identify the person using the terminal. But always accessing at the same time every day on the same terminal makes it easy."

"Fine, but what do you want with me? Am I going to jail for hacking the Air Force or something?" James asked. The Doctor laughed.

"You are a kid; we're not going to lock you up." He said. James sighed in relief.

"Then what?"

"I am here to test you, and then make you an offer if you pass. You passed the test with flying colors."

"This was a test?"

"Yes, from the beginning. All of those backdoors on the Air Force's website were arranged just for you. If you had tried to get into any truly classified information, we would've shut you down instantly, but you did just as predicted."

"What kind of offer do you want to make me?" James asked crossing his arms.

"You know you don't fit in here James. You belong somewhere you can learn, somewhere you can stress your mind on the important things… I can give that to you." Doctor Laskin said.

"Did you think I went to great lengths to keep myself hidden for nothing?" James asked. "I don't want to go some special facility to learn far away, I don't want to be guided and forced along a path I don't belong on… I want to be able to choose one for myself. If I did that I would never have anything other than fake freedom."

"No James, you misunderstand me. I want to teach you, I want to become your mentor, your teacher. There would be no obligations to the Air Force or anyone, just you and me and learning of subjects that are actually up to your caliber." Doctor Laskin said. "You wouldn't have to go to school anymore either."

"Is… this some kind of joke?" James asked.

"Nope."

"A dream?"

"Not as far as I am aware of my friend."

"No strings attached?"

"Indeed."

James paused to think this over. It was exactly what he wanted. A teacher who wouldn't force him along a path he didn't want to be on… and he wouldn't have to leave his parents. For him, the choice was obvious.

"I… I'll take that offer Doctor Laskin." James said reaching out his hand. The Doctor shook it.

"You made the right choice." He said.

"If I had chosen not to take your offer?" James asked.

"Oh, I would've taken you to some clandestine Air Force jail where you would've spent the rest of your days." He said. James went wide-eyed. Then the Doctor started laughing. "Just kidding."

"Man that was totally not funny." James said.

The Doctor merely smiled and stood up.

"Well enough of this, let me show you to my home where we can get started.

The Doctor took him in, and started to teach him everything he knew. He knew about incredible things in science. He taught him how to stop himself from being tracked when hacking and about hiding the source of his signal. He taught him incredibly complex mathematics, and even brought in a friend to teach James about medicine.

Over the next few years, James learned an incredible amount of information in a short amount of time, until eventually; he might as well be a PhD in a few things himself. Still, the Doctor had more to teach him.

* * *

**3 Years Later**

* * *

James entered the Doctor's house as usual through the front door. It was small and modest, and almost completely non-personal. He knew that the Doctor only came here when he was to instruct James, as he spent most of his time up at Cheyenne Mountain. James assumed he had a room there that probably looked a lot more personal than this house.

Over the years, James had put in several hours into researching the secret project under Cheyenne Mountain, he had found out a lot, but was not even close to determining the projects purpose. All he knew about the project itself was that it was extremely well funded by the government, and according to various records, had a far reach. He had found that huge amounts of electricity were being directed there as well, which led James to assume that the project was centered around some kind of device, but what the device did, he had no idea.

What he didn't know about the project, he made up for in knowledge of their actions. Following several money trails and other leads, he had linked at least one "asteroid" to them. He severely doubted it was an asteroid of course. They had also had some connection to several isolated incidents around the country. All of this using the hacking skills he had acquired from studying under the Doctor.

James slowly walked through the house, and found the Doctor in the kitchen.

"Good morning James, how are you today?" Laskin asked.

"Pretty good Doc, found another incident that could be linked to that secret project you work for." James said.

"So, still digging are you?" Laskin asked smiling.

"Yes, and I swear one day I'm going to find out what it is."

"If I have my way, you'll be working in that program one day."

"That makes me all the more eager to find out what it is."

"Then dig away, it is good for you to practice your hacking. I assure you though; you won't be able to find out what it is."

James put his backpack on the table as the Doctor grabbed bowls from the cabinets.

"It would go better if you didn't forbid me from trying to hack into the system directly…" James said.

"I have no doubt you could do it James, but that is one thing I can't let you do." The Doc said.

"Why not?" James asked.

"Because, it's dangerous information for you to know." He said pouring cereal into the bowls. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"Yet you let me use any other sources to try and piece it together?" James asked lifting an eyebrow.

"Yes, because I guarantee you will never find out what it is without inputting into the systems directly. The Air Force would be onto you within minutes, they have security beyond just the heavy encryption. Your system would be hit with spyware and tracked within minutes."

"But I use my own personal software to prevent data like that from being routed back to my system." James said. "Not to mention the shield software that's installed on every single server that we bounce our signals off of to stop our signal from being located when we hack."

"It's not that easy James…" The Doc said pouring milk into the bowls after the cereal.

"Oh and why not?"

"Because, they use extremely advanced stuff. I won't go into the specifics, but it really is just impossible."

"That's what you think." James said winking as he put the bowls of cereal down on the table, sliding one over to James and throwing him a spoon. "Thanks Doc."

"You know, I think the Air Force has the advantage over you in that regard James." Laskin said. "But I don't think it's impossible that you could do it without Air Force personnel busting down your door. Still, I'd rather not take the chance. Be patient, you'll find out when you're ready."

"Whatever you say Doc." James said digging into his cereal.

They spent the rest of the day discussing vacuum, or zero point, energy and the importance of clean energy in light of the world's current environmental status. Doctor Laskin discussed the topic with intimate familiarity that James knew he couldn't have acquired through his classes upon Theoretical Astrophysics. The details he imparted indicated that he had actually worked with technology that had taken advantage of it before.

He thought that maybe that was one of the things he had been working on in the secret program. But according to everything he had found, the program had been going for ten years, so that could not be the programs primary focus. Success would've indicated a severe drop in the programs dependence on the power grid, and this had not happened, and if the project had not succeeded within that long a time, it surely would've been shut down a long while ago.

_Maybe the program concentrates on multiple areas of scientific interest? If the military is involved, maybe it has something to do with weapons. _James thought as he ate lunch. _But no, that can't be it. The Doctor hates weapons… he would only work on a project that furthers humanity. _

They spent the rest of the day testing James's familiarity with everything he had been taught thus far. He as always passed with flying colors thanks to his eidetic, otherwise known as photographic, memory. It was one of the reasons he was so good at working with multiple kinds of science and mathematics, and lessons never needed to be taught twice.

His got frequent headaches though, as the sheer amount of information he took in each day was overwhelming.

The eidetic memory wasn't the only thing that made him a genius though. He also had extremely high reasoning ability, seeing how everything fits together using his knowledge was easy for him.

James quietly thought over everything he had learned that day over dinner. The Doctor remained silent as usual. While James usually loved to talk, the Doctor knew that this time of day was the time he was quiet. As always, the dinner he ate there at the Doc's house was light, as he would be eating with his family soon… but they would never be quiet, and James wouldn't have time to think, so he also ate dinner here every night.

After a lengthy amount of time, the Doc cleaned up and spoke the first words to have been spoken in almost 45 minutes.

"You'd better head home now James, it's getting dark, and I have to work tonight." Doctor Laskin said.

"I don't know how you do it Doc; you teach me by day and work by night, when do you get sleep?" James asked.

Doctor Laskin laughed and grinned.

"Rarely son. Coffee really helps though." He said.

"Well, good luck at work tonight." James said grabbing his bag and standing up. He walked over to the front window and gazed out into the fading light.

"Thanks James, you have a good night." Doctor Laskin said.

Suddenly, James noticed something strange. There was a black van parked outside, and the door suddenly flew open. A man clad entirely in black suddenly jumped out, another climbed from the driver's seat.

They had sub-machine guns, and they were coming towards the house!

"James?" Doctor Laskin asked.

"Doc! There are men with guns outside; they're coming up to the door." James said backing away from the window nervously.

"That can't be good." Doctor Laskin said. "Call the cops James."

As James rushed to the phone, Doctor Laskin quickly began shutting off lights and locking everything he could reach. He picked it up and was about to begin dialing 911 when he noticed there was no ring-tone, which could only mean one thing.

"Doc, they cut the phone lines!" James said.

"Use your cellphone." Doctor Laskin said as he began shutting the curtains. James quickly complied, having his cellphone out in a flash and dialing 911 followed by pressing the send button. But when he put the phone on his ear, all he heard was static.

"Who the hell are these guys?" James asked himself. "They're using cell jammers!"

"That really isn't good." Doctor Laskin said. He went over to a drawer and pulled it open, after some scrambling he pulled out something and came over to James. He put a handgun in James's hands. "Take this James."

"Wh-what a gun? But you hate guns Doc!" James replied.

"I know James, but you have to trust me and do exactly as I say, got it?"

James nodded. Doctor Laskin clicked something on the gun.

"There, the safety is off. All you have to do is point it, and pull the trigger." He said. Suddenly, there was a loud crashing noise towards the front of the house. Doctor Laskin went over to a large wardrobe and opened it. "Hide in here."

James obeyed and climbed into the wardrobe.

"What are you going to do?" James asked.

"That doesn't matter. Promise me something James." Doctor Laskin said.

"What?" He asked.

"No matter what happens, you stay in this wardrobe until the cops get here."

"But I wasn't able to call the cops!"

"I know, just promise me!"

James nodded and the doctor closed the doors as footsteps approached. James opened it a crack so he could see what was going on.

"Doctor Andrew Laskin, just the man we were looking for." The first man said. He suddenly pulled out a long steel rod with two prongs on the end, and stuck it into the doctor's stomach. He screamed in agony and fell to the ground as orange light decorated the bedroom walls.

James had to cover his own mouth to prevent himself from screaming in horror. He held the gun closer to him.

"Who are you? What do you want?" The Doctor asked his attacker

"What? You think your investigations into our agents in the Stargate program would go unanswered?" He said.

_What the hell is the Stargate program? _James thought.

"So… so this is what this is about?" Doctor Laskin asked. "You're members of the Trust!"

Orange light decorated the wall again as the man again poked Doctor Laskin with the rod. He also again screamed in agony.

"What about you, have nothing to say about the situation?" Doctor Laskin asked the other man.

"You will not speak to a god unless spoken to first!" The second man said. His voice sounded strange, as if it was being modified by voice modulation. It sounded quite distinctly alien. The man grabbed the rod from his compatriot and poked it into the Doctor, and held it there. There were more screams.

He was finally released from the agony after several seconds.

"You things still think your gods? Even after we've killed off the influence of your entire race? You Goa'uld are all the same, never giving up when you're so obviously defeated!"

The "Goa'uld" as Doctor Laskin had called him again poked him with the rod, provoking more tortured screams.

"You!" He said to his compatriot. "Search the house, just in-case. I will kill this one slowly."

"Of course." The man responded. He treated the "Goa'uld" as if he were superior. James wondered why.

The man left the room to commence his search of the house, as the "Goa'uld" continued to torture his mentor for no obvious reason. Eventually, James was reduced to silent tears as he watched his mentor and friend in severe pain. It seemed to last for hours, even though it was only several minutes. James couldn't bear to watch, yet couldn't bear to look away.

Eventually, the man came back, and he started to search the room they were already in. He flipped drawers after emptying them, ransacked the bed and flipping it on its side, he knocked over a bookcase after throwing several books off of it. Then he began to approach the wardrobe.

James backed up in fear and raised the gun as much as he could in the enclosed space. But suddenly, he heard sirens.

"Hm, of course they interrupt my fun." The "Goa'uld" said. "Come, we must leave. Shoot him first."

"Of course." The man replied simply. James felt the sudden need to run out and shoot them, to stop his mentor from being shot. But he knew that would not work, and he had to keep his promise. He retreated deeper into the wardrobe and slid down the back of it crying silently.

Soon after, two gunshots and screams of pain penetrated the barren silence. James resisted shouting and stood up, and gazed again out of the wardrobe. The "Goa'uld" touched something on his wristband, and suddenly, large stone rings smashed through the ceiling and floors above before enveloping the two in perpetrators in light, and rising back up to the heavens before completely disappearing.

He instinctually knew they were gone, and leapt from the wardrobe dropping the gun. The cops may not be inside yet, but he knew they were there, and that was excuse enough to go to his mentor's side.

"Oh my god no… Doc, are you alive?" James asked as he collapsed on his knees beside the Doctor, who had two gunshot wounds to the stomach. He applied pressure to the wounds, and found that he indeed was still breathing, but it was shallow, and James felt that his pulse was slow.

The Doctor suddenly coughed blood.

"James?" He said.

"I'm here Doc!" James said grasping one of the Doctor's hands inside one of his own bloody ones. "You're going to be alright! The cops are almost here, they'll fix you up."

"I'm afraid not James. Those bullets they shot me with, they were coated in poison."

"You don't know that Doc! Don't speak such nonsense!" He said.

"It will kill me, slowly and painfully." He continued ignoring James. "But that isn't the point. James… you have to get into the Stargate program, you have to tell them who killed me. You… have to tell them that… there are… agents… James… Stargate…"

He fell unconscious.

"Stay awake Doc! Please stay awake!" James yelled with tears pouring from his eyes. Police came rushed into the room guns raised at that point. "Help! Please!"

James cries yielded success. The cops rushed to the Doctor's side, making James move, and he let them take over. An ambulance was their soon after, and the Doctor was rushed to the hospital along with James, who had convinced the cops was his father. At the same time, he texted his real Dad that he would be at the hospital and that the Doctor had been shot. He would inform them on the specifics later.

They arrived at the hospital sooner rather than later. They immediately rushed him into an OR, but just as the Doc had predicted, he died after several hours as James sat in the lobby with his real parents. He was no longer crying… just stunned.

The police questioned him as to who these others were, and he told them of his deception and told them that Doctor Laskin was tutoring him. They questioned him on the events, and he told them that two men had broken into the house and killed Doctor Laskin while James had hid in the wardrobe and left before the cops showed up. He told them nothing about what had really happened, he knew they wouldn't believe him anyways.

The Doctor's told him that the Doctor's death had indeed been caused by poison after he asked, but they told him also that the poison was completely new, something they had never encountered before. It seemed to have made Doctor Laskin suffer for hours before he finally passed.

James couldn't get the sound of the Doc's scream out of his head as they travelled home from the hospital the day after. His parents didn't question him of what had really happened, they could always tell when he was lying, as they knew he would tell them when he was ready.

In the meantime, James processed everything that had happened over and over again in his mind.

He assumed the "Stargate program" was the secret program that Doctor Laskin worked for. He didn't know who "The Trust" was, or the "Goa'uld", but they seemed to be working against the Stargate program… and using technology James had never seen before.

The torture rod and the rings, not to mention the "Goa'uld's" weird voice.

Then he came to the Doctor's request, and he knew he would have to honor it. Whoever "The Trust" was, he knew they were dangerous. If there were agents in the Stargate program, he would help rat them out himself. If nothing more than to avenge his mentor.

He just wondered how he would approach it.

* * *

**Review please!**


	3. Chapter 3: Infiltration

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 1: Mentor**

**Chapter 3: Infiltration**

* * *

James slowly moved the cart through the dark streets. It was stacked with a ton of computers and other incomplete technology and parts. It had been two months since Doctor Laskin's death, and his plan to get into the Stargate Program was almost complete.

Originally, he had tried to get in contact with the program. But no one he called and no one he asked would confirm its existence so that James could tell them what they needed to know. Besides, they would never let a kid into the program. He needed to be a part of it if he was going to find the people who killed his mentor. Eventually he decided that the only option was to break in, steal a ton of classified data, and then bribe the program into letting him join.

Through some acute hacking he managed to locate some basic blueprints for the floors under the known facility at NORAD. It wasn't much, but James used intuition and identified some points which would obviously work as command rooms and such. After that, he plugged the blueprints into a program and uploaded it to an imaging and scanning Satellite he hijacked from a college observing Continental Drift.

He had sat in the background and made no moves to alter the Satellite's predetermined course. When it finally got to the appropriate point over the United States, he quickly infiltrated its scanning capabilities and ran a deep penetrative scan on Cheyenne Mountain using the blueprints as reference to increase its ability to scan at depth.

After that was done, he downloaded the scan results onto a miniature Hard Drive he had designed and built himself and taken the computer apart piece by piece, salvaging the parts that couldn't be identified the second he plugged into a network and throwing the others out. The results of the scan gave him a much more detailed map of the facility, as well as detecting major electric activity using a heat map.

Most of it seemed to be concentrated on a single room powering a single device in the center of the facilities lowest floor. It was drawing an enormous amount of power. In fact, James had no idea what could be drawing so much from the Power Grid. Still, he also managed to identify the server room. This would be where they kept all of their files stored. It was an offline containment center to make sure the more sensitive information couldn't be accessed by anyone who managed to hack into the facilities network.

He had decided himself to avoid directly hacking into the facilities network because of the Doctor's warnings. He had said it was nearly impossible, and if the Doc had thought it was almost impossible for James to do it, it probably was. He believed him.

James had identified an entrance point as well thanks to the scans which revealed a tunnel ladder in a nearly unguarded area. He guessed that it was unguarded because it could probably only be unlocked from within. Solving that problem had brought James to dragging the cart with a bunch of parts and computers along a street towards an abandoned building where he had set up a workshop.

Finally, he dragged the cart into his workshop and went to the bench where he had been working on a handheld high powered laser that could be powered with a single AA battery thanks to some workarounds he had managed to use. It was extremely sensitive to work with, but he had finally reached completion of it. Unfortunately, a single battery could only power the laser for about twenty seconds and the laser could only be used at extreme close range.

He moved it over and looked at the other things he had invented to get him inside. He had invented a mini-stun gun that sent out high powered sound waves in a concentrated direction. The sound waves were tuned to a frequency that interfered with conscious brain function and knocked out anyone it was aimed out almost immediately for about five minutes. After checking it and making sure everything was in working order, he moved that over and picked up his camera interference device.

With the press of a button it automatically made any cameras nearby loop the last sixty seconds of its broadcast, giving James the ability to slip through undetected. The scan had also revealed camera placement, so he knew when and where to press it along the route he had selected. It seemed to be working properly.

He packed all of these devices into his pockets along with his phone, which contained an App he had invented to track sound waves and identify footsteps, then place them on a map of the facility, some miniature hard drives he had invented with over a Terabyte of data storage, and his laptop, which he would use to create a distraction that would get everyone in the facility looking for him… but also out of the rooms he needed to get into.

He was already wearing an all-black outfit with a folded up ski-mask and stepped out with everything he needed. James proceeded to move quickly through the streets and towards the mountain.

He finally arrived about a half-hour later at the fence point as close to the entrance as he could get. He took out his laser and powered it on, then proceeding to cut a hole in the electric fence and stepped through right under the "trespassers will be shot" sign. He stealthily proceeded to crawl through the grass and into the small forest where the entrance was located.

He encountered a few guards, which he let walk past before crawling forward. After several long minutes of crawling, he finally reached the entrance. A guard was looking around nearby, and he couldn't afford to wait. He pulled out his stun-gun and aimed it at the guard. He then pressed the button and the guard collapsed.

"Sorry buddy." He whispered as he stood up. He jumped up on top of the entrance ladder hatch and pulled out his laser. He had exhausted a battery carving through the fence and popped it out accordingly. James then grabbed another battery from his pocket and slipped it inside of the laser before closing it.

He depressed the button and began the slow process of cutting through the rather thick hatch. He exhausted six more batteries before finally finishing it, making a piece of the hatch fall before he grabbed it, preventing it from falling. The guard he had knocked out groaned and started to get up as James slipped down through the hatch, grabbed the piece he had carved out, and placed it back in its place before cutting through one of the ladder rungs with his laser and using it to prop up the piece.

He then proceeded to climb downward. It took him several minutes, but he finally reached the bottom and stepped down.

He had considered waiting until he had made it through the facility to launch his distraction, but that would mean having to open his laptop and conduct critical operations in the middle of a crowded hallway.

He also knew he would have difficulty connecting through wireless to external networks so deep inside of the facility, even with his software that greatly boosted his wireless receivers range as well as making it easy for the signal to penetrate thick walls through the use of signal modification, which changed the shape of the signal so that it flowed through matter like a stream instead of trying to punch straight through it.

Knowing all of this, James sat down flipped open his laptop and started it from sleep mode. When it was done, he quickly logged in and activated his signal booster. When he had finally found a nearby wireless network, he hacked through the WIP key protection and hijacked it. After that, he went to the Air Force's website and ran his backdoor program.

The backdoors popped up nearly instantaneously on his screen. James noticed that the backdoors were in the exact same number as they had been three years ago when the Doctor had picked him up out of his school. Then he read the ID's of all of the backdoors and they were identical to the ones that had been there three years ago as well.

"What the hell?" He asked himself. "I thought these backdoors were set up exclusively for me, it shouldn't still be here… should it?"

James knew that there were only two possible explanations for this. One was that the Air Force already knew he was here and was testing him just as Doctor Laskin had so many years ago, and the other was that Doctor Laskin had never really been tutoring him on the behest of the Air Force. He was inclined to believe the ladder. It made so much sense that way.

It explained why they had never given Doctor Laskin extra time off so he could tutor James.

"Holy…" He whispered. Instead of concentrating on the implications, he powered through and used the same login he had used three years ago. It went through almost immediately.

_That was easier than I thought it would be… _James thought.

After that, he proceeded to enter NORAD's simulation list and schedule. He moved the simulations up so that they would queue up one after another in five minutes, and then removed the precautions telling them that a simulation was about to start, which would launch them into significant confusion. After that, they would trace the signal of who had altered the simulation schedule, which would lead directly to his laptop.

Knowing that they would be able to track it, he set it down on the ground of the shaft and stood up. He ran a USB wire he had built into his phone to the lock on the door, which all ran on an internal offline security network. He ran an App that gave him access to the network and looked at the encryption on the lock. Using the mini-keyboard built into the phone as well as touch, he hacked through the encryption quickly and there was a buzzing as the doors lock released. He also made sure to insert a virus into the system which would prevent the lock codes from being changed.

He saved his solution and wrote an App to run it as soon as he plugged the phone into another lock, as all of them shared the same encryption. He proceeded to unplug his phone from the lock and run the detection App. It indicated that no one was currently nearby. Trusting it, he pushed the door open and looked around. There was indeed no one in sight, he stepped out and closed the door behind him. The locks re-engaged.

Keeping his eye on the phone, he started slowly making his way through the hallways of the base…

* * *

**In the Gate Room…**

* * *

"We have an incoming connection sir." Walter said to General Landry as he stood over him. "No Iris code yet."

The Stargate engaged and the Iris closed over it.

"We got anything?" Landry asked.

"Yup, receiving SG-1's Iris code." Walter said.

"Let them in."

Walter unlocked the Iris and almost immediately as it opened two arrows passed through and hit the wall below the control room. After that, there were two dings as bullets joined them.

"What the hell?" Landry asked. "If they were coming in hot, why didn't they contact us?"

He proceeded down the stairs as SG-1 ran into the Gate room.

"Close it!" Mitchell yelled. Walter did as he said and Landry walked in as the gate shut off.

"What the hell is going on?" Landry asked. "You all know its standard procedure to call in if you're coming in hot."

Mitchell was out of breath and raised a finger to tell him to wait a moment before raising himself up.

"Of course sir, but there was something there that broke our radios in the forest. We didn't notice until we were coming back through." Mitchell said.

"I managed to repair our Iris device while we were in the middle of a firefight." Sam said. "Sure was a close one."

"Were those bullets?" Landry asked.

"Indeed they were General Landry." Tiel'c said.

"Well, does anyone care to explain how they got guns? This was supposed to be the standard seek peace with the primitive locals run." Landry said.

"Gun, just gun General." Vala said.

"Okay, where did they get that gun?" Landry inquired scowling.

"Well it was her fault really. They sure figured out how to use it fast though…" Daniel replied.

"Are you telling me that they got her gun?" Landry said. "How exactly did they do that?"

"I really needed to pee sir, I set my gun down for just one second and when I got back, they started shooting at us with it." Vala said. At this, he noticed her distinct lack of a P90.

"They have straps; why in the _hell _would you set it down?" Landry asked unamused.

"Well sir, in my defense, the weight is pretty uncomfortable." Vala said. "Not exactly something you want to be hauling around when you're trying to-"

"Whatever… just meet me for debriefing in fifteen minutes." Landry said before walking away.

"Well now you went and did it Vala." Daniel said.

"What?" She asked.

"I think he's referring to the fact that you seemed to make him quite angry." Tiel'c said.

"Well I can hardly be blamed for them having too much of an interest in advanced weaponry." Vala replied.

"I have to say I disagree." Mitchell replied as they began to walk towards the locker room.

"Well to each their own." She replied sticking her tongue out at him. Sam and Daniel looked at her raising an eyebrow.

"What?" She asked. They just shook their heads and continued walking. "What?"

They just kept walking and she scowled before following Sam into the ladies locker room.

Fifteen minutes later they were all sitting silently in the debriefing room waiting for Landry to finish in his office. When he walked out, he appeared even more agitated then he had been before.

"Looks like we're going to have to forego the briefing everyone." He said.

"Yes!" Vala whispered to herself with a fist pump. They all looked at her. "Hm, well this is awkward."

Landry sighed.

"Why do we need to do that sir?" Sam asked.

"There's someone in the base playing games with us. He hacked into NORAD and set off missile simulations across the board." Landry said. "We tracked the signal back to the source and found it in the middle of the ladder shaft on this level. It was a laptop. Strangely, it held no obvious clues as to the identification of the hacker, but be prepared for anything."

"How did he get in?" Mitchell said.

"It appears the perpetrator used some kind of sonic wave device tuned to a frequency that causes the brain to instantly render the target unconscious. Damn, that is a mouthful."

"That's advanced tech, I've never heard of anything like that before." Sam replied.

"What about the Jaffa? I thought their stun grenades used sound…" Vala said.

"They use a combination of sound waves and light to cause unconsciousness in the user." Sam said. "The General said that the use of a sonic device was used, indicating that it was sonic-only and made no use of light."

"Perhaps it would be clearer if the General told us what the targets reported seeing before they were knocked unconscious." Tiel'c piped in.

"They reported that they heard some kind of ringing noise in their ears before they woke up again five minutes later." Landry said.

"Then it is obviously different, as Jaffa grenades last far longer." Tiel'c replied.

"But that sonic device couldn't have been enough to break in." Sam said.

"He had other apparent devices as well, among them appears to have been some kind of high-powered laser. He used it to cut through the electric fence and the hatch at the top of the shaft." Landry replied.

"It could've been a she to you know." Vala said. "After all of the female involvement in this to… shame on you…"

"Vala, I don't think he meant any offense." Sam said.

"Eh, don't worry about her. She's just easily offended, do you mind getting to the point sir?" Mitchell said.

"Wait one more thing." Sam said. Mitchell rolled his eyes in response. "Even with a laser like that, how did he get into the door at the bottom of the shaft?"

"The people who examined it reported that it was broken by a modified smart phone and good hacking." Landry said. "Problem is, all of the locks are run on an internal security network, because of that, he now has a half-second lock pick to every lock on the base."

"Isn't that designed to be able to change the code for the locks at a moment's notice?" Sam asked.

"Usually, but it appears our hacker friend dropped a virus into the network as well that stops us from modifying anything. Our best computer guys are on it, but they say it could be a while." Landry answered.

"Whoever this person is, he… or she… is really good." Daniel said.

"Thank you for respecting the opposite sex Danny." Vala said.

"I thought I told you not to call me that…" He replied.

"Oops, too late." She answered grinning.

"Enough!" Landry said. He looked extremely angry now.

"No need to get so worked up…" Vala whispered.

"Daniel, take Miss Mal Doran with you and check the corridors on this level. Tiel'c and Carter… try and quickly scan the levels above us for intruders. It doesn't appear he or she has moved, but you never know. Mitchell I want you above ground coordinating with the men to make sure that he or she doesn't escape." Landry said. "I have a pile of paperwork and this interuption is at an unfortunate time, so hurry up and find whoever is here!"

"Sir…" Daniel started to say.

"Did I say you could ask questions? Go, that's an order!" Landry replied.

"O… kay then." Daniel said. "Come on Vala."

They quickly left the room as General Landry walked back and just managed to restrain himself from slamming his door.

* * *

**Back with James…**

* * *

James sat in the dark broom closet watching the monitor on his phone. Too many people were moving through the hallways now for him to move through them safely, so he was waiting for now. He was guessing most of them were non-essential personnel being moved to the upper levels while Special Forces cleared the rooms.

After a while, the amount of people outside finally cleared out and he started to head for the door, but suddenly a bunch of dots appeared around the corner and he pressed himself against the wall. One of them came up to the door and slammed it open. James attempted to hold his breath in complete silence.

"Hey, wait a second there." A voice said. It was a man.

"What is it; I'm trying to clear rooms here." The Special Forces man replied.

"We're supposed to be coordinating here and your rushing ahead of me. We're supposed to be fast yes, but also thorough." The man replied.

"I assure you Doctor Jackson, I can do both." He replied.

This name immediately struck a chord with James for some reason. He didn't know why.

"You should just let the man do his job." A female voice said.

"Vala, let me do _my _job please, unless you're actually going to help…?" Daniel said.

"Um, never mind." Vala replied.

"Oh, and you… still, more slowly please." Daniel said. The Special Forces guy sighed.

"Fine… But with the next room, this one looks clear anyways." He said.

"Good then, let's go." Daniel replied. The Special Forces man closed the door and James released his breath explosively.

_That was a close one. _James thought. _But where have I heard that name before._

He scanned his large collection of memories and found it almost immediately. It had been last year at the Doc's house.

_Doctor Laskin dropped an extremely thick book down on the table in front of James and slid it over to him. It was a thick book called "The Truth about the Pyramids" by Doctor Daniel Jackson. _

"_What's this?" James had asked._

"_It's your literature for this week." He said._

"_But I've never even heard of… wait a minute, yes I have." James said. "Daniel Jackson is that wackjob who thinks aliens used the Pyramids as landing pads for their spaceships. Why would I read this? That guy is nuts!" _

_The Doc appeared to suppress a laugh at that moment. James wondered why, it cleared up rather quickly._

"_Don't question why something is put in front of you, if you want to learn, read it." He said._

"_Fine…" James had responded._

He went wide-eyed with realization that they were one in the same.

_But… why the hell would that wackjob be here? _James thought. _Not to mention telling an Air Force Special Forces guy what to do! Could it be… that he was right? _

He shook it off.

_Well, time to go find out then._

He looked at his phone. There was no one nearby and he left and kept going. He was nearing the server room he had identified with his scan.

Not wasting any time, he was there within minutes. It was empty, but James didn't know whether the room had been checked yet or not. Still, he knew it would take a long time to check the entire level not to mention the entire base, so he risked it. He stepped inside and went straight to the computer. He powered on the central terminal and flipped open one of his miniature hard drives USB 3.0 dongles before plugging it into the port.

After hacking into an administrative account, he scanned the servers and discovered they housed a ton of data. It contained scientific records of devices he had never seen and could spend hours figuring out, thousands of mission reports from various personnel attached to "SG" teams, research data he could only begin to comprehend, audio, a database of files of a format he had never seen before which seemed to contain records on extremely complex technology and a history of something called "The Asgard", videos, among other things.

He knew there was no way he would be able to fit all of this data onto his hard drives, so he selected and began the copying and compression of all of the most heavily classified material he could find which would store itself in multiple archives across his drives. One thing he was worried about was the terminal had code that could exclusively decrypt and read the files, but he was sure the server he was going to upload them to would be able to handle the decryption. After all, he had written the algorithms himself.

Scanning through the videos as the extremely long copying process began he found a video labeled with a series of random numbers and letters. The description interested him though, as it appeared to be a video to bring new recruits up to speed with the "Stargate Program", what it did, and its history. Considering what James was planning to do with the data he found, he would eventually wind up watching this video anyways.

So, to busy himself while he waited for the data transfer to complete, he started up the video. Much was it to his surprise when he found that Daniel Jackson was the host of this documentary. He proceeded to watch the entire thirty minute long summary, switching hard drives for the data transfer when needed.

_I can't believe he was right. _Was the only thought that occurred to James as the video wrapped up the summary of the entire ten years of the Stargate Program. He at least now knew what he would want to do when he used his data to bribe the government.

Suddenly, there was a noise outside the door followed by a distant but distinct "ouch".

James looked at his phone. Standing right outside the door was four dots. Panicking, he pulled out the hard drive in the middle of the data transfer knowing that he had more than enough by now. He powered down the computer monitor, grabbed all his stuff, and hid behind one of large servers as the Special Forces guys busted into the room.

The other two stayed outside the door, and because of this James couldn't leave. They would come in his direction eventually to so he didn't know what to do next.

In a sudden burst of inspiration, he pulled out his sonic emitter knowing it would only work on one target. He opened up a tiny panel and using his nails, split two wires and pushed them together with his pinky. He closed the panel and pressed the button to turn it on before throwing it right in front of the Special Forces guys. Working the wires together had created a feedback loop in the devices electronic receiver. He plugged his ears as the device shot out overcharged sound waves that were at the wrong frequency to knock people out, but still extremely loud.

This caused the two at the door to run in and check on the source of the noise, and while they did this, James ran out into the hallway. Eventually, the loop built up so much electrical energy in the receiver that it exploded. It zapped the Special Forces guys and stunned them as James ran for the control room next door which had an active connection to the internet for him to use.

As he did this there was a yell for him to stop behind him. He dashed into the room and slammed his fist into the lockdown button next to the door. The door slammed shut and locked before someone slammed into it and started trying to knock it down from the other sides. Red alarm lights came on and klaxons started wailing as bulkhead doors started sliding down over the doors and over the glass screen in the front of the control room.

He looked through it and spotted the Stargate, and he was frozen in wonder for a few moments before running up to one of the Terminals and logging into his account on the Air Force network. He quickly accessed the internet and keyed in the IP address that would bounce his signal to the server he had set up for the upload of the data. He slammed the first USB Hard Drive into one of the ports and started uploading the files.

After he finished the first rather quickly, he switched out for the next one and repeated the process. As he reached the last one and started the upload, he heard a noise of foot on metal behind him and flipped around. Standing there was an old man in an Air Force uniform on the stairs. He was pointing some kind of S-Shaped object at him; James assumed it was a weapon of some kind. It was not one he recognized.

"Now what do you think you're doing here son?" He said.

James scanned the man's uniform and saw the stars that indicated that he was a General. He spotted the name Landry on the nametag. In Doc and James's studies of military history, his name had come up once or twice even though the battles were insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

"Am I mistaken or did I ask you a question?" Landry asked.

"You did…" James replied trying to buy time for the upload to finish.

"Well then where is your answer?" He replied.

"That would take a while to explain…" James said.

"Don't tell me you're our hacker son." Landry said skeptically. "You're just a kid, no way you did this."

"You'll find that I am rather resourceful General." James replied. Landry grunted.

"You're honestly telling me you're alone in all this?" He asked.

"Yes, and it's the truth." James replied.

"Hey, what did you do to that computer?" Landry said stepping down from the stairs without moving the weapon.

"Stay away from that…" James said.

"No, I don't think I will." Landry said walking towards him.

"I said no!" James yelled. This startled Landry and caused him to stop.

"Fine then, if you're going to be violent." Landry replied. "Sorry kid. This'll hurt quite a bit."

He depressed the trigger and a blue beam of what appeared to be electrical energy emerged from it. James dodged to the side and grabbed a cardboard box as the energy shot slammed into the computer terminal and caused a lot of screens and buttons to overload and explode. James threw the box at Landry.

"Think fast!" He said. Landry knocked the box aside and took aim again. James tried to dash up the stairs but Landry shot him in the back.

James yelled in absolute agony as the zap erupted through his being. Landry went over to the lockdown and cancelled it with his handprint as James lay on his side on the stairway still barely awake.

"Sir, I came down as soon as I heard about the control room lockdown. What happened?" A woman said. She crossed into his vision as she said this. He determined through his blurred vision that she was a blond in an Air Force uniform.

"I captured our hacker." Landry said pointing.

"You're kidding me." Another male voice said from beyond his vision.

"I'm afraid not Mitchell." He responded.

"But he's just a kid." Mitchell replied.

"You should know by now that age does not reflect skill Colonel Mitchell." Said another voice.

"Guess you've got a point their Tiel'c." Mitchell said.

"Still, that's incredible." Daniel said.

"It really is, this kid has got quite some talent." Said the blond.

"Colonel Carter, he was doing something with the computers there." Landry said. She walked over.

"Hey, there's an active upload going on here." She said. She pulled out the USB drive. "I've managed to interrupt it, but it was at ninety percent."

She handed James's drives to another soldier and told him to go and determine what was on them.

"He must've downloaded the classified data in the server room to those drives. I've never seen a design like it, but they appeared to have been data storage devices. After downloading the classified data, he apparently uploaded most of it to somewhere else." She said.

"Can you find out where it went?" Landry asked.

"I could try, but you shot out the computers controls with that Zat." Sam said. "I could get it up and running, but you likely shorted its memory and I won't be able to recover much. Even if I could, he's good. I doubt he didn't cover his tracks very well while uploading that data."

"What was he going to do with it?" Landry asked.

"I… uploaded it…" James started to say.

"Wow, I can't believe he's still awake after getting shot with a Zat the first time." Daniel said.

"He looks delirious. Perhaps he can inform us of his plans after he gets healed up in the infirmary." Mitchell said.

"That seems like the best course of action." Tiel'c said.

"Okay then, get him back to the infirmary. We'll have a meeting when he wakes up…" Landry said. By the end of the sentence things really started to get blurred for him and he couldn't really tell what was going on anymore. Eventually, all he could see was shapes and it sounded like everyone was talking like the adults in Charlie Brown.

He had a vague impression of being lifted onto a stretcher before he blacked out.


	4. Chapter 4: SG1

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 1: Mentor**

**Chapter 4: SG-1**

* * *

James slowly awoke with a thumping headache. He groaned before slowly opening his eyes and almost behind blinded by the light. He tried lifting his left hand to cover his eyes, but found that it was handcuffed to the hospital bed. He looked to his right and found that his other hand was in the same situation. A curtain was drawn around him, so he couldn't see what was going on around him. But he could hear the quiet voices of people around him.

He also found that his all black outfit had been removed and he was strapped into a uniform with an SGC emblem on both of his shoulders and on the right side of his chest.

_Well, that didn't go as I planned… _James thought. _I wonder what the hell that thing he shot me with was… Still, the upload was mostly finished and the file reconstruction algorithms on the server should be able to deal with the less broken files. Anyways, let's get out of this bed; I apparently have a meeting to attend._

"Uh… hello?" He called. There was no answer, but nearby footsteps approached and drew the curtain around him away. He noticed that several people with injuries lay on the beds around him as he glanced at the woman wearing a lab-coat that had drawn his curtains away. The card hanging off of her chest read "Dr. Carolyn Lam". "Hello doc."

"Hm…" She said. "You seem to recovering well."

"What the hell did I get shot with?" James asked.

"I'm not at liberty to tell you that." She said. "Anyways, you'll be glad to know that you're fine and that the headache should fade within the next few hours. You're incredibly resilient though, so it may be even faster. Although, I'm not sure being medically fine will make you very happy about what happens next."

"What? Some dark cell in the facility of yours for the rest of my life?" He asked.

"I'm honestly not sure." She replied. "Of all of the espionage this facility this facility has experienced, you're the first kid to break in."

"Hey, watch who you call a kid lady. I'm fifteen years old." James said.

"Fine, the first teenager then." She said annoyed.

"Don't you mean teenage genius?" James said grinning.

"Why, look who's full of himself. Although I suppose it would take a genius to break in here…"

"James Parker at your service. Say… how old are you anyways?"

"Are you… hitting on me?"

"No, I'm just kidding with you. You're too old anyways…"

"What did you just say…? I'll show you old kid!"

"Man, you fell for that one hook, line, and sinker. Seriously, I'm messing with you because I can tell that you're trying to get a read on me…" James said. "Besides, you make that wire way too obvious. You have to stand in a way that it doesn't show through your shirt."

She looked down.

"Ha, thought so." James said.

"You tricked me… again." She said. Suddenly, someone finished pulling the curtain aside.

"Finally, the man standing behind the curtain." James said looking at the Air Force Colonel whose nametag read Mitchell. "I would do that with more flourish, but my hands are kind of tied."

He shook the handcuffs on his hand.

"Okay kid, that's enough." He said.

"Seriously, aren't these handcuffs kind of unnecessary though?" James asked. "Where am I going to go?"

"I kind of like your style." Mitchell said pulling out a key and unchaining him. He rubbed his wrists. "But you're kind of a smart-ass."

"James "smart-ass" Parker at your service." James said. "Unless you didn't notice, I'm deliberately annoying you."

Mitchell sighed.

"Yes, I picked up on that." He said. "Now come with me, you have a bit of answering to do."

"Just one question before we head up that road… Who changed me?" James asked standing up.

"I did." Carolyn said. "Before you start getting cocky, no pun intended, you don't have anything I haven't seen before…"

She walked away as James looked at her.

"Well, that was eventful." He said.

"I thought it was kind of creepy." Mitchell said.

"I think it was revenge for hitting on her." James said.

"Whatever, let's get a move on." Mitchell said. The Colonel plus a three-man armed guard escorted him to the control room. They intentionally blocked his view of the Gate as they climbed the stairs.

"I already know about the Stargate, that's unnecessary." James said.

"You can go ahead and get back to work guys; I'll take him from here." Mitchell said looking down towards them. They shrugged and left and they finished climbing the stairs. Mitchell pulled up a chair next to a man James immediately recognized as Daniel Jackson. James looked up the table to spot the blond woman he had seen before; they had called her Colonel Carter.

James immediately recalled the video as knew what all of their names were, although another black haired woman sat next to Sam that he didn't recognize. Sitting at the top of the table was the General that had shot him with the thing that he didn't know the name of, which was until he recalled Carter calling it a "Zat" before.

"Wow, greeted by SG-1. That's quite an honor." He said.

"The fact that you know the name of their team already hurts your chances of seeing the sun again son." Landry said. James pulled up a chair on the other end of the table and sat down before folding his hands out in front of him and leaning back.

"I don't honestly think that you'd have the stones to give a kid life-imprisonment." He said.

"Don't let him antagonize you sir, he's intentionally pushing everyone's button. I'm pretty sure it's just a tactic." Mitchell said.

"I kind of like it." The black haired chick said.

"Nice catch Colonel, I am indeed not usually like this." James said. "Speaking of, who are you? I didn't see you on the video."

"I'm Vala, nice to meet you."

"She wasn't there when the video was recorded, nor has she been a member of SG-1 for long." Daniel said.

"That's an explanation." James replied.

"I am not sure whether that comment about him not being usually like this was sarcasm or not." Tiel'c said.

"That was kind of the intention Tiel'c." He said. "I would call you something more formal, but that's the only name I got off of the video."

"Hm…" Was his only response.

"Enough of this, where is the data you uploaded?" Landry asked.

"I can see you're a straight to the point kind of guy, so I won't waste your time." James said. "I'm not telling you until I get what I want. Oh, and don't think you can find it either. The server I uploaded it to is not even in this country, and it's currently offline decrypting the files and reconstructing the parts that didn't make it through in the upload."

"Those are extremely complex programs sir, there's nothing like that available on commercial markets." Sam said.

"I thought I've said before that I'm a genius, besides, you people should know…" James said.

"Why exactly would we know?" Daniel asked.

"Well, the Air Force headhunted me three years ago. I would've thought that you guys would've done a background check, and Doctor Laskin should've passed you at least weekly reports on my progress…" He said.

"Son, I have no idea what you're about. All I know is that we just now did a background on you, and your school apparently received an authorization from the Air Force for you to be removed from school. Only, the authorization was fake, we never sent it." Landry said.

"Wait a second, Doctor Laskin… Doctor Andrew Laskin?" Sam asked.

"Yes, that's the one." James said. "Looks like my suspicions were correct…"

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked.

"When I hacked in here, I ran a program that detects the backdoors on your website and gives me access to official channels." James said. "Three years ago, the same backdoors were there. Doctor Laskin said the Air Force had set them up to test me. He was lying, he found out about me himself…"

"Wait a damn second, who is this Doctor Andrew Laskin?" Landry asked.

"He was a Theoretical Astrophysicist that works for this program." She said. "He was pretty bright to, but he was murdered two months ago. Some goons broke into his house and killed him."

"Okay, and what does this kid have to do with him?" He asked.

"He was my mentor." James said. "He wasn't killed by just some random goons either, it was a hit."

"A hit?" Mitchell asked. James nodded. "By who?"

"Whoa, it's actually information that needs to be presented to the Stargate Program. It's very valuable intelligence I assure you, but not just yet." James said. "Not until we settle our business here."

"What do you want? A pardon?" Landry asked.

"Yes." James said.

"I can arrange that." Landry said.

"My demands don't quite stop there." He said.

"Some unreliable intelligence that came from a break in doesn't quite make it worth further demands." Landry replied.

"Are you forgetting about the files I uploaded off-site?" James said. "There's more than enough in there to expose the Stargate program. In about a week, that server will come back online and it will email all of that information to every journalist on the planet."

"That doesn't sound like something we can risk happening…" Vala said.

"It sounds like he has the upper hand in this situation." Tiel'c said.

"Fine, what else do you want?" Landry said.

"I want to join the Stargate Program…" James started.

"Your young, but your skills make it more than worth it. I can make that happen." Landry said.

"Wait, I wasn't done. I want to join the program as a member of SG-1." James finished. Everyone swung their heads towards Landry.

"Come on sir, he's just a kid! We get into really dangerous stuff! He can't join my team…" Mitchell said. He trailed off.

"That's not up to you Mitchell; this is a matter of national security." Landry said.

"I don't think it's that far-fetched of a request." Tiel'c said. "Just because he is a child does not reduce his worth. If he wants to help his people, he should be allowed."

"I have to agree with Mitchell on this one, he's a kid. He could get seriously hurt or killed." Daniel said.

"He's also a genius." Sam said.

"…with Eidetic Memory." James piped in.

"What's that mean?" Mitchell asked.

"It means he can't forget anything. It's just the real word for photographic memory." Sam said. "That means once he learns a lesson, he won't forget it."

"It's one of the reasons Doctor Laskin chose to teach me." James said.

"Doctor Laskin obviously saw potential in him, and I trusted him." She added.

"I'm not sure." Landry said. "I will have to consult with my superiors. But I imagine under the circumstances that they will agree."

"Before you stand up, I'm not going to immediately going to release the data to you." James said. "I won't do it until I trust that you won't toss me out the door at the first opportunity. I will however make sure that the Stargate Program isn't exposed."

"While I personally wouldn't throw you out, I can see your stance on this." Landry said. "Those terms seem reasonable. I will be back."

Landry stood up and went into his office.

"This isn't right." Mitchell said. He stood up angrily and left.

"Thanks for the support." James said. Then he smiled. "Also no Tiel'c, I'm not being sarcastic."

"I meant every word." Sam said. "I wouldn't say it if I didn't."

"Thanks Colonel." James said.

"Call me Sam; it looks like we'll be working together after all." She said.

"Okay… Sam." James said smiling. "Maybe you can help me out. Sure, Doctor Laskin was instructive… but the concepts at play here are way above me. You could help me finish my instruction."

"I don't see why not." Sam replied.

"What about combat?" Daniel asked. "We fight a lot and I don't seem to recall kids getting combat training."

"I've taken a bit of Martial Arts and my Dad taught me how to shoot. He likes hunting." James said. "I'm okay at it if I do say so myself."

"I could teach him." Tiel'c said.

"I wouldn't reject to that." James said.

"I honestly like this kid's style." Vala said.

"You've already said that." James said.

"I know, but I said it because I really do." Vala said. "People don't usually believe me because I'm a thief. Or I used to be at least."

"Looks like you find more reputable work." James said.

"I'm also an alien." She said. "Well, to you at least. To me you're the alien."

"Really? You don't look like an alien." James said. "But I assume that's because…"

James and Daniel both started to talk at this point.

"…the Ancients seeded humanity throughout the galaxy and then the use of Stargate's spread them even further."

They looked at each other and James grinned while Daniel adjusted his glasses.

"Eidetic memory…" James said. "It's not all glamour you know. I get headaches, and sometimes I remember things just a bit too vividly. It's actually a rather disturbing ability…"

"I can imagine." Daniel responded.

"Seriously, I still remember getting shot with the Zat like it just happened a few seconds ago." James said.

"I suppose you try and remember happier things then." Sam said.

"I try; it doesn't really work when you can't forget anything." James said. "But you kind of get used to it."

Landry's door opened at that point and he stepped out and took his seat. He set a large folder he had been carrying with the Air Force stamp on top on the table in front of him.

"Where did Mitchell go?" He asked.

"He stepped out." Daniel said. "I don't think he's too happy about this arrangement."

"He thinks I'm going to get myself killed. Because he's the leader, I suppose he would blame himself." James said.

"Anyways, this folder contains your non-disclosure agreement." Landry said tapping his finger on it.

"That's one thick NDA." James said. "But alright."

Landry slid it over along with a pen.

"Do you require a lab?" He asked.

"Yes." James said. "I invent things, and I assume that with the knowledge that comes with this program, I'll be able to invent even more. Of course I'm going to need a substantial amount of materials…"

"That can be arranged through a requisition order." Landry replied.

James opened the NDA and started looking at each page individually before turning it.

"Do you really read that fast?" Vala asked.

"No." James said. "I'm taking mental pictures of each page so I can read it in my head later."

"But doesn't that kind of eliminate the point of reading it?" Sam asked.

"I'm going to join this program no matter what. To join it, I have to sign this agreement, which doesn't apply to any information I gather outside or already have gathered by the way… so no tricking me that way." He said. He crossed out a few lines with his pen.

"We accept the modifications that apply to the information you've already gathered." Landry said. "Anyways, will you need quarters or should I arrange a driver to bring you back and forth?"

"I'm going to be spending the next few days here reading up on the more detailed history of this program, so yes. I'll also need a full desktop computer in my room and my laptop back." James said. He finished flipping through the NDA and signed it before sliding it back across the General Landry.

"I'll arrange that for you." Landry said. "In the meantime, where do you want your check to go? Personal bank account or some such? I imagine the substantial amount of money from working here could help your parents."

"Just make the checks out to my parents." James said. "I don't need the money now. I have everything I need right here."

"Fine then. What about that intel?" He asked.

"I almost forgot about that one." James said. "Before Doctor Laskin died, he told me to use whatever means necessary to get into this program. Not in those exact words, but that's what he meant. Anyways, Doctor Laskin was conducting a personal investigation into Agents of the Trust that are working here inside the Stargate Program."

"There are Trust agents here?" Landry asked.

"Yes, the Trust came to his house and killed him. I was standing nearby, and I'm lucky they didn't discover me or that man and what I now know is a Goa'uld would've tortured and killed me to." He said.

"That's bad news." Landry said.

"Those bastards killed my mentor, I'm going to get back at them through whatever means necessary." James said.

"I understand your feelings." Landry said. "We need to look into this, run more thorough background checks of our personnel."

"Their already very thorough sir, I doubt an even more thorough background check would pull up anything." Sam said.

"We can scan the entire staff for Goa'uld in their heads." Daniel said.

"That's another good idea." Landry said.

"Oh, and I'll try and hack into Laskin's personal files and dig up what I can about his investigations." Sam said.

"I can help you there." James said. "I know his style. He taught me everything I know."

"That appears to be all." Landry said. "Dismissed I guess. You will be receiving your quarters very shortly Mr. Parker, we have plenty of free rooms available, although you'll have to wait for the computer. You're going to have to go consult with our computer experts to get your laptop back. Have them set you up an account."

"I'll give him a tour and we can pick it up on the way." Sam said.

"I'd also like to see your lab if that's okay." James said. "Who knows? I could learn something."

"Thank god that's over." Landry said. He stood and went into his office.

"Well, let's go I guess." Sam said. They both stood up, and went to the door. Then James turned towards them.

"Uh… what are you two going to do?" He asked.

"I will "hit the gym". If you wish to begin your training with me, I will be there." Tiel'c said. He stood up and walked past them.

"I'll be reading some more into the Asgard database I guess." Daniel said. He stood up and walked by them to.

"Since when do you guys have access to the Asgard database? They are those aliens right?" James asked.

"That's a general term, but yes. The Asgard went extinct shortly after that video was made, and they managed to equip the Odyssey with their legacy before then." Sam said. They stepped out into the hall and she beckoned him down the hall to the right.

"The Odyssey?"

"We'll talk more when we get to the lab."

"You know, I don't really need a tour." James said. "I know this place like the back of my hand because of a deep penetrative scan I performed. There were also some cursory blueprints in the video."

"Well thanks for taking the air out of my balloon." She said sarcastically. "Don't worry about it; let's just go get your computer before our experts accidentally fry it or something."

"I have another one at home if necessary." He said. "Oh, and I imagine security wants those viruses out of their network."

She chuckled.

"Yes, I imagine they would." Sam said.

"Do you have my cellphone?" James asked.

"Oh yea, guess I don't really need to check it out anymore." She said. She handed it back to him. He walked over to a nearby door and connected the phone to it. He sent a code to the internal computers and the security computers were freed. He disconnected and put the cellphone in a pocket in his uniform.

"There you go." He said.

"Those are some handy modifications." She said lifting an eyebrow.

"Yea, the phone runs on a custom operating system." James said. "It took me a few nights to code, but it was worth it. I also switched out the phones proprietary memory with something smaller so I could fit the USB. Corporations would kill to get their hands on this thing."

"I can see that, here are the computer guys." She said.

They walked in and they had it hooked up to a computer and were running diagnostics.

"You aren't going to crack my security like that." James said.

"Huh?" One of them said. "What is he doing here?"

"Turns out he's joining the Stargate Program." She said. "You can give him back his laptop now."

One of them mumbled as he disconnected the computer and handed it to him.

"At least I got here before they tried dissecting it." James said grinning. She nodded.

"Anyways, my lab is this way." Sam said guiding him out the door.

"Lead on commander." James said.

They walked through another few hallways and eventually reached her lab. It was filled with computing equipment and boxes of files. On the main table, an orange circular device was sitting on top of a pedestal and hooked up to a bunch of wires.

"What is this?" He asked.

"This is a Zero-Point Module, ZPM for short." She said.

"As in Zero-Point energy?" James asked.

"Exactly." She replied. She tapped a few buttons on the keyboard of her laptop. A ton of energy readings and such came up. "This one is nearly depleted; I was taking some energy readings and running some diagnostics. We're still trying to figure out how exactly these are constructed."

"How can it be depleted?" James asked. "Zero-Point energy is by definition infinite."

"Well, the term "depleted" is inaccurate. When enough energy is taken from the device, the connection to subspace inside the device entropies and the device becomes useless." Sam replied.

"Subspace?" James asked.

"Subspace is a layer of space beneath our own in dimensional terms. It doesn't operate under the same physical rules as reality does, and because of that, there are plenty of things we can do with it. Hyperspace for one…"

"Hyperspace? Like Science-Fiction Hyperspace?"

"Exactly like that. Our Hyperdrives breach Subspace and travel through it and then re-enter reality when ready. Because Subspace doesn't operate under the same rules as reality, travelling through it is different and we can travel vast distances in reality without even moving that much in Subspace."

"So we have spaceships?" James asked. "I mean, I heard a little about space travel in the video but I didn't think that we actually had ships."

"Yes, we have ships. They are a mixture of alien and human technology." Sam said.

"That's incredible, sounds like I have a bit to learn." James said. "Could I?"

He walked up to the computer. She allowed him to peruse the readings.

"I know a lot about astrophysics, but some of this stuff is way above my head…" He said. "Wait a second, what's that?"

He was talking about a specific signature buried in the physical code of the 3D model the computer had taken of the device.

"Don't worry about that, it's just an error in the construction code." Sam said.

"I… I don't think so." James said. "Look, there are identical bits of code throughout the 3D modeling. If they were all errors, then they wouldn't match so well."

"Hold on a minute, I think you're right." Sam said. She walked up to the computer and keyed in a few things to zoom in on the sections that matched the physical code. "I can't believe I didn't catch that."

"It's because you're familiar with the technology. I'm not, so I scanned the code with a more in-depth view." James said. "You're also an astrophysicist, not a computer genius. I've always been into computers; programming and coding are my specialty."

The zoom completed, but the image was too blurred for them to see anything.

"Now what?" She asked herself.

"The modeling program you're using isn't complex enough to scan such minute bits." James said. "Let me add a few lines of code to the software."

"But the database on this program is locked." Sam said. He stepped up to the computer and hit a few keys and the unlocked database came up. "Never mind then."

He typed in a few lines of code and finalized the changes. The image cleared up, and the modeling detected an anomaly so small it could barely be displayed even with James's coding changes. They were a ring of extremely tiny holes circling the device.

"What do you suppose those are for?" James asked. He hit a few keys and zoomed in a bit further to see what was in the holes.

"I'm not sure." Sam said. "But the Ancient's wouldn't have put them there without a reason."

The zoom scanned further and detected small nubs at the end of each.

"Huh…" James said.

"Wait, I think those are buttons." Sam said.

"Yea, I think so to."

"The problem is the holes are so small that nothing we have could possibly fit." Sam said. "They are beyond microscopic."

"Still, I suppose they would be worth looking into right?" James asked.

"Yea, great find James." She said. "This may even be a way to open the device."

"Wouldn't the energy contained inside explode with more energy than a nuclear bomb?" James asked.

"Yes, and even if we drove the device to entropy first, the residual radiation would be astronomically high and the leftovers of its energy would still explode outward. Although, if the portal to subspace was still open, the energy would keep expanding until it destroyed the entire universe." Sam said. "But if it was made to entropy first we could contain it."

"With what?" James said. "Nothing I know about could contain an explosion of that magnitude."

"We have force-fields." Sam said.

"Not to say that isn't cool, but none of that matters if we can't get it open." James said.

"I know… but still, it never hurts to plan ahead." She replied.

"Well, I'll be watching more of Doctor Jackson's videos tonight. Then I'll be reading through mission reports and such. If I come across anything, I'll tell you." James said. "Do you mind if I stay here tonight? I don't have a computer in my quarters yet, so…"

"It's fine. Is something bothering you?" Sam said. "Sorry, it just seems like it."

"No, it's fine. It's just… that I can't believe Doctor Laskin lied to me like that all of these years. I trusted him with my life, and he didn't tell me that? Why didn't he trust me enough to just tell me?"

"Perhaps he thought that the thought of the Air Force enamored you, and that the status kept you there."

"No, he knew I didn't really care about the Air Force." James replied. "I guess… that maybe even after he knew… the lie had been going on for so long that he couldn't bring himself to tell the truth."

"Once you have a lie that has gone on that long, it is really difficult to tell the truth." Sam said.

"Well, anyways. I have a new mentor now don't I?" James asked. Sam smiled.

"Yea, I guess you do." She replied.


	5. Chapter 5: First Mission

**Thanks for the reviews you've been giving me! It's definitely better than the reception I had for the original version. Oh, and sorry for the Tiel'c/Teal'c thing. It's always been confusing to spell that name, hahaha  
**

* * *

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 2: Trust**

**Chapter 5: First Mission**

* * *

James spent the next few hours in Sam's lab reading mission reports and such. When she left and went home, he kept at it.

The next day, Sam walked in the lab to find James sleeping on top of the keyboard. She tapped his shoulder.

"Hey, come on, wake up." She said. James yawned and blinked.

"Oh, hey Sam. Sorry, I guess I lost track of time." James said.

"It's fine." She said. "Just remember you have quarters next time."

"Then again, I wouldn't have you as an alarm clock then." James said.

"Anyways, to Mitchell's displeasure, SG-1 has been put on temporary leave while you brush up." Sam said.

"Oh, really?" James said. "But why?"

"Apparently it's regulation that all registered team members have to go on every mission." She replied. "Since you're registered now, we can't leave without you unless we get express permission. The General seems to think having you on will give us unique perspective, so he won't give it."

"Oh, sorry." James said.

"No problem. Speaking of you being registered by the way, here's your login." She said giving him a slip of paper.

"Oh yea, we forgot to ask them to give me one yesterday." James said taking it. He looked at it, and then threw it out.

"Aren't you going to keep that?" She asked.

"Why?" James asked.

"Oh yea, Eidetic Memory." She said. "That's a bit freaky. So… you can perfectly recall everything you've ever perceived?"

"Yup. Ask me about any day, and I'll tell you what I was doing during it."

"Okay, August 17th, 2007."

"Got up, took a shower, went to Doctor Laskin's house, we had breakfast, he was wearing weird clothes, we talked about the chemical properties of certain minerals, went home, had dinner, went to bed." James said. "I could be more specific, but we'd be here all day."

"Don't worry, I believe you." She said. "Anyways, Tiel'c asked me to send you down to the gym if you weren't doing anything important."

"Okay, I'll bite." James said.

"When you're done, come back and you can tell me what Doctor Laskin has taught you so I can continue your studies." She said.

"Got it." He said. "Say… Sam. Why do you trust me so much? The others sure don't, even Tiel'c."

"Because I can see you have potential. Besides, Doctor Laskin trusted you and if he trusted you, I can trust you to. Tiel'c doesn't trust anyone right off, so you'll have to wait for that."

He nodded and stepped out and headed for the Gym, he arrived a few moments later to find Doctor Jackson and Mitchell sitting on the bench watching Tiel'c practice staff fighting against a wooden target.

"Hey Tiel'c." James said ignoring Mitchell and Jackson but still listening in.

"This still isn't right." Mitchell whispered.

"Do we have to go over this again?" Daniel asked.

"No, but I can't believe we're getting grounded because of a kid bribing his way onto my team. I don't trust him and I don't want him." Mitchell replied. "How can I have him watch my back on a mission?"

"You don't have to trust him. It's his choice to be here." Daniel said.

Tiel'c stopped and turned around to look at James.

"So you've come." He said. "Then defend yourself!"

He threw the staff over to James and grabbed his own.

"If you insist!" James said. Tiel'c rushed him with a downward slash of the staff, and James blocked by lifting up his staff with both hands. Tiel'c raised the staff and spun with a swing at his legs. James slammed the staff end onto the mat to block.

"Very good." Tiel'c said. James retaliated when he was standing still with a stab, but Tiel'c easily went around it and grabbed the staff with his underarm before tugging it out of James's hand and throwing it away before trying another swing at James's legs.

He rolled under the swing and grabbed the staff with a handstand before flipping back over onto his feet. Mitchell and Daniel both gaped at him.

"What the hell was that?" Mitchell asked.

"Are you sure you can't trust him to watch your back now?" Daniel asked.

"Ah, so you do have some skill." Tiel'c said.

"I'm pretty good yea." James replied. But Tiel'c grinned.

"I like your spirit, but this is over." He said. He did a spinning swing at James's left leg, but when he went to block, Tiel'c changed his area of attack to his right leg and managed to trip him before planting the staff end on James's neck.

"I think you underestimate me…" James said. Suddenly, he twitched his right hand and sent Tiel'c onto the mat with the end of his staff before jumping up and doing a descending slash towards his neck. But Tiel'c rolled out of the way and stood before going into a flurry of attacks which James blocked. But then Tiel'c kneed him in the chest and threw James's staff far to the left with a slash before pushing James onto his back and planting the end of the staff on his neck again.

"It appears I did underestimate you, but I have clearly seized victory now." Tiel'c said.

"Yea, good game." James said before groaning in pain as Tiel'c helped him to his feet. "Looks like I've got a bit to learn."

"Indeed." Tiel'c said. "We will continue at another time."

James nodded and went to leave the room but stopped in front of Mitchell and Daniel.

"I know you don't trust me, and you don't have to. I don't have any right to demand your trust after what I did." James said. "But I think you should do what Doctor Jackson is doing Mitchell, and give me a chance."

Then he left.

"He deserves that much." Daniel said before standing up and making to leave.

"I didn't say he didn't." Mitchell said. "But he's still a kid, and I don't want him getting hurt because of this."

"He's old enough to make his own choices Mitchell." Daniel replied. "I think you should respect that and not think you have to blame yourself if he does get hurt."

Daniel left Mitchell with his thoughts.

James returned to Sam's and he briefed her on what he'd learned so far. She began to teach him while occasionally heading to the Mess Hall to grab them something to eat, and when night came around again, he returned to his quarters. Then, he made a phone call to his parents.

"Hello?" His mom answered urgently.

"Hey Mom…" James started.

"James? Where the hell have you been?" She asked.

"Wh-, huh?" James asked.

"You disappeared without telling us where you were going the day before yesterday and we haven't seen you since! I called the cops and their out looking for you as we speak. Where the hell are you?" She asked. James punched himself lightly on the forehead for being so stupid, he'd been so focused on his task he had completely forgot about his parents.

"Hey, I'm sorry Mom. I'm fine; I'm up at the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force base. You know, where Doctor Laskin worked." James said.

"So where is he Laura?" Asked his Dad in the background.

"He said he's up in Cheyenne Mountain Mark." His Mom replied.

"What in the hell is he doing up there?" His Dad asked.

"Tell him that the Air Force has recruited me for a top-secret project. That's all I'm allowed to tell you, I had to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement and everything." James said. "Sorry I waited so long to call you but I've been busy. I'm going to be coming home tomorrow to pick up some clothes and then staying here for a few days, alright?"

She conveyed what he'd said to his father.

"Well, alright then. As long as they didn't force him into it." His Dad said.

"Tell him not to worry about any of that." James said. "This… this is everything I've ever dreamed of doing. Tell him I'm not just helping the military, I'm going to be doing things you couldn't possibly imagine. I love you Mom, I need to head to bed alright?"

"Alright honey." His Mom replied. "I love you to."

James hung up and went to sleep.

For the next month, he spent the majority of his nights reading everything he could get his hands on and watching the rest of the videos Daniel had made. During the day, he either trained with Tiel'c in both physical and mental parts of combat or studied with Sam in the field of Theoretical Astrophysics. He also taught her a few things about computers.

He visited the Mess Hall a few times during this month. He tried to sit and talk with the other personnel, but they just got up and walked away. When he went to grab his food, he would feel the untrusting eyes on his back, but when he turned, no one was looking at him. So he kept his head down and ate before leaving.

Finally, the month came to an end and he felt he was ready. He went to General Landry's office and knocked on the door.

"Come in." He said through the door. He entered. Landry was studying a file on his desk and looked up only for a moment to see him before looking back down. "Ah, James. How is your training coming along? I want to put SG-1 back in the field as soon as possible."

"I think I'm ready… sir." James said. "Also, you can't fool me. I know you've been having Tiel'c and Sam send you reports on my progress. I haven't really seen Vala around though."

"She has an apartment off-base she spends her time in." Landry said. "Anyways, Sam and Tiel'c both seem to think you're ready to. Pass it along that you have a briefing at 0800 tomorrow morning."

"Alright sir." James said.

"Dismissed." Landry said. James left with a smile on his face.

The next morning, they all met in the briefing room. Landry had a few files and he passed them along to them.

"About two weeks ago..." Landry started. "…we sent a MALP to P9X-846. It is a planet on the far edge of the Milky Way galaxy. What we found there seems to be a large building made of metal. Unfortunately, the air is apparently mixed with high concentrations of a variety of poisonous elements, so you'll have to wear filtration devices during your visit. The planet is otherwise safe, and may reveal some technology to study."

"Sounds interesting." James said. "Did this metal building have any particularly distinguishing features?"

Everyone else had already opened their folders and were looking over the pictures. His cheeks filled with blood before he opened his own folder and no one answered the question

"Um… the building doesn't seem to have any. There doesn't seem to be any mistakes or flaws in the construction either, and seems to be more functional then it is to look good. I think it wasn't made by anything living. The edges seem to have extraordinary detail and accuracy to… so the machine used to build it seems extremely precise." James said.

"I agree with James. There doesn't seem to be any computer technology in this room or any others the MALP looked at though, some further exploration may reveal something." Sam said.

"Nothing cultural really sticks out at me here." Daniel said.

"This mission sounds like no fun." Vala said under her breath.

"Anyways, your objectives are as always to explore and find any useful technology. Get dressed and be in the gate room in fifteen minutes. Mr. Parker, your uniform is inside your locker. We've switched to digital locks recently, so all you need to do is key in a few numbers and that will be your passcode." Landry said. "Dismissed."

They all stood and headed down the stairs into the control room and out the door before taking a left and walking past the server room he'd seen before and into an Armory. The locker rooms were behind them, and they went into them and got dressed. James had brought a backpack with his laptop inside as well as an adaptive connector they had invented for accessing technology that wasn't their own.

He got dressed in the standard vest and camouflage pants that were in his locker before heading into the Armory and swinging his backpack on.

"James, over here." Mitchell said as he stood next to a table filled with Zats. He walked over and Mitchell held one up. "This is a Zat Nik'tel, we just call them Zats."

"That thing that Landry shot me with? Yea, I read a little about them." James said. "Their Goa'uld weapons, but we use them because they are so highly effective."

"That's right. You squeeze the trigger section with all of your fingers to ready it, and then squeeze again to fire." Mitchell said. "One shot to stun, two shots to kill, and three shots to disintegrate your target."

He handed it to him and James slipped it into a strap on his uniform that seemed to be designed for it.

"What? Don't I get a gun?" James asked.

"No." Mitchell said simply. He then picked up a Beretta M9 and loaded it with a clip before taking two more clips and stuffing them into the slots on the back of his belt.

"Why not?" James asked as Mitchell swung a P90 over his back.

"Because, I don't trust you." Mitchell said. "I'll give you a chance like you asked, but you don't get a gun until I say you can. You're lucky you get a Zat, but I don't want you to get stuck alone with hostiles and get yourself killed or captured."

"I'm not a kid Mitchell." James said following him around as he collected a few slides of ammo for his P90.

"Whether you like it or not, you are." Mitchell said. "So get used to it alright? Also, that's sir to you."

"I'm a member of this team just like anyone else, and I'm not a member of the military. I can call you whatever I want to _Mitchell_." James replied angrily.

"If he desires a weapon Colonel Mitchell, he should have it. He has already displayed competence with your projectile weapons in our training." Teal'c said.

"Well, he's not getting one." Mitchell replied. Then he grabbed and strapped on a small mask that covered his mouth and had two small canisters hanging from it that James assumed was the filtration system Landry had been talking about and left. Teal'c raised his eyebrows confusedly; he was apparently not used to him acting like this. After that, he followed Mitchell through and Daniel and Vala followed after him with them all grabbing their masks.

"Don't worry about him." Sam said already fully equipped with her mask on. Her voice was lightly distorted because of the mask. "It's just going to take him a little getting used to. You ready?"

"More than ready." James said grinning and strapping his own on. "I'm about to travel thousands of light-years across the galaxy in a fraction of a second through a stable wormhole. That's exciting stuff."

They both left side-by-side.

"You get used to it after a while." Sam said pulling on her hat as they went down the stairs. "It's what you find on the other side that's exciting."

"I can imagine." James said. "What does it feel like?"

"What? Getting torn apart into tiny molecules and beams across the galaxy? To me, it feels like being stretched and then compressed." Sam said. "I can't really describe it otherwise."

"That sounds rather unsettling." He replied.

"I've seen more than a few people lose their lunch after their first try." She replied. "But, like I said, you'll get used to it."

They entered the gate room and Vala, Daniel, Teal'c, and Mitchell were already standing there as the gate dialed its fifth chevron. They joined them as it hit its sixth. The gate spun to and locked its chevron and the unstable vortex leaped from the gate before settling into place. James gaped at the action.

"Wow…" He said.

"Okay guys, let's go." Mitchell said. He stepped up onto the walkway followed closely by Daniel and Vala before they stepped through. Teal'c followed and all that was left was James and Sam.

"Here we go." Sam said. He walked up and jogged across the ramp and through the gate. James stepped nervously up onto the ramp and walked until he reached the event horizon. He stuck his hand into it. The wormhole reacted as a puddle would, his action sending ripples across it. He could feel what Sam had said, his hand felt like it was being stretched, and he moved it around a little bit.

"Okay then… here we go." James said. He closed his eyes, stepped through, and felt the indescribable feeling of being stretched before suddenly feeling as if he was being compressed again. Then, he took a deep breath as he stepped out of the other side and opened his eyes. Almost immediately, he was hit with an intense wave of nausea that made him lean over grasping his stomach trying not to throw up. "Oh… man that's bad."

"I told you didn't I?" Sam said.

"Thanks for rubbing it in." James said standing back up straight.

"Be careful with those masks people." Mitchell said. "Those things come off for a few seconds and you're done."

"Thanks for pointing that out… captain obvious wasn't it?" Vala said. "I can't understand all of these weird expressions. You people are weird."

"Well, most people think the same about you." Mitchell replied.

"That's because I am weird." She replied.

"Like I said, there aren't any cultural distinctions in this structure…" Daniel said cutting them off. "I don't think this was built by anything living, so James was right."

"This is Colonel Cameron Mitchell, nothing new here near the gate." Mitchell said into his radio.

"We have you Mitchell, report back if you find anything. Out." Landry replied. The Stargate shut off at this point. They all turned on their flashlights.

"Okay people, you should stay close and tell me if you see anything of interest." He said. They all walked out of the room through the opening in the front with Mitchell in the lead holding his P90 up.

"Sounds like a plan." Sam replied.

"Wait a second, does anyone else feel that?" James asked. He felt a breeze coming from their right.

"Yea, I do to." Sam replied.

"Okay, we'll head in that direction then." Mitchell said.

They followed the breeze through a set of hallways and past plenty of completely empty rooms.

"It doesn't make any sense, why would they construct all of these rooms, but not put anything in them?" James asked.

"Maybe who or whatever lived here was decimated before they had a chance." Sam replied.

"That sounds as good an idea as any." Teal'c said.

"Hey, look, there's light at the end of the hallway." Mitchell said. "Looks like a way outside."

"Come on… please be a tropical planet…" Vala said crossing her fingers.

They followed Mitchell, and they exited the structure. A sun was beating down on the flat sandy desert ground. He lowered his gun as a breeze sent a bit of sand drifting past them and they all put on sunglasses.

"Well, we aren't in Kansas anymore." James said.

"Of course it's a desert planet…" Vala said let down.

"As far as I know, we weren't in Kansas to begin with." Teal'c replied.

"Ooh, I know that one, it's an expression!" Vala said.

James lifted an eyebrow.

"This is insane." James said.

"What, the planet?" Sam asked.

"That to." He replied.

"Hey, look over there." Mitchell said pointing to something silver in the distance. "Is that another one?"

"Yea, it looks similar to this one." James replied. "We should check it out."

"Oh yes, let's check out the second creepy structure on the deserted desert planet." Vala said. "Why can't we just go home?"

"Hey, you said home." James said. "I thought you were an alien."

"Well, I guess it is home for me now." Vala replied. James nodded and smiled.

"Let's just go already…" Mitchell said. They walked across the desert for several minutes before they crested the sand dune and saw the second structure. "It looks exactly like the other one, are you sure we'll even find anything inside?"

"No, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't go check it out." James replied. "Let's just get out of this damn sun already."

He went on ahead.

"Hey, hold on a minute kid, stay with the group." Mitchell said.

"There's nothing here, what's going to get me?" James asked.

"Oh, there's plenty that could get you with an attitude like that." He replied grumpily following after him. The rest of them followed after him as well, and they finally reached the structure and went inside. As they did, lights came on across the ceiling.

"That's more like it." James said. "Now if we can just find an active console… Which I assume they used consoles."

"Look, there's wire along the floor. Maybe if we follow it we can find something." Sam said.

"Okay, please stay behind me this time kid." Mitchell asked.

"You need to stop worrying so much." James said. "But alright."

They followed them, and eventually ended up in the same room the Stargate had been in the other building. Inside, there were several large curved silver devices with smooth oval tops.

"They're like… big silver ice cream scoops." Mitchell said. "Well, at least I can't think of anything else to describe them."

"They appear to be some kind of mainframes or servers." James said.

"Carter, why don't you try and get into them?" Mitchell asked.

"There are no physical interfaces in here." Carter said.

"Look, there are some ports." James said. He pulled out his laptop and flipped it open before waking it up from sleep mode. "I'm going to run my adaptive connector into it and see what I can do. Who the heck invented this thing anyways?"

He pulled out the cord with a gel end-piece and plugged it into one of the ports which it didn't fit, letting it hang. Then he hit a few keys and the cord started to mold to the port.

"I did." Sam said. "It's based on an Ancient design we found in the Atlantis database."

"Very cool." James said. "Guess it doesn't hurt to be able to use Human computers on alien tech. Anyways, it's done. My computer is analyzing the OS now and trying to boot it."

A few hundred lines of code crisscrossed James's screen and suddenly a holographic interface popped up complete with keyboard. Sam went over and tapped her fingers onto the holographic keys with letters she didn't recognize, if she kept going she could pass right through it.

"Wow, that's a weird way to interact with a computer…" Sam said.

"It seems to be a holographic interface that can detect when matter touches it." James said. He hit a few more keys on his keyboard. "I can't understand this language, what do you think Doctor Jackson?"

"Hm… well, it's not like anything I've ever seen but there only seem to be twenty six characters like our own alphabet, so I assume it's based around English." Daniel said. "Does your computer have a linguistics program? I can associate letters in our alphabet to theirs, and it should be able to translate it."

"Yea, here." James said pulling up his linguistics program and handing the computer to Daniel.

"I can recognize a few already… the characters seem to be lightly based around the language of the Ancients now that I look more closely." He said tapping a few keys. Fifteen minutes passed and he was finished. "Got it."

He handed the computer back to James, who executed the translation program based on Daniel's configuration.

"There we go." James said. He hit a few keys and managed to bring up a tech manual on the device. "Okay, it seems it automatically detects the genetic or material makeup of nearby objects. When it coincides, the interface pops up. They were human, but their base DNA sequences differed ever so slightly from ours. It was probably because of their time spent off of Earth."

He tapped a few keys.

"Alright, I added our base DNA sequences into the database. The entire planet is hotwired into a network, so it'll work everywhere. Oh, and Sam, it's going to be pretty difficult to type on that keyboard. These people had devices in their fingers that automatically froze them when they hit the keys."

"Neat, although it must have been hard to implant everyone." She said.

"Not everyone had them." James said. "They could choose to have them implanted to make it easier to use holographic devices."

She nodded.

"But what happened to the people who lived here?" Mitchell asked.

"I don't know…" James said. "Let me check some records."

He pulled up a few, and read a little bit before his eyes widened and his pulse quicken.

"What's wrong James?" Sam asked indicating the expression on his face.

"We need to get out of here; we need to get out of here now." He said.

"Why?" Mitchell asked.

"This." James asked. He queued a video he had found, then stood up and use his hands to expand the holographic screen and move it to a place they could all see it. It was a recording from a personal video camera of a woman.

_She pointed the camera way from herself. A city skyline was revealed._

"_Here it is, it's a beautiful day here in Skyline city. Welcome to my Vlog…" She started to say. Suddenly, there were screams in the distance. "What was that?"_

_She angled the camera towards where the screams were coming from, and suddenly, a cloud of what looked like silver dust crested the buildings over the horizon. As it drifted over the buildings, they suddenly disappeared. _

"_What… the… hell?" She asked herself. The cloud of dust kept approaching, and even as people ran away past her, she couldn't bring herself to look away. _

_Eventually, it was right in front of her and she lowered the camera. People running towards her were enveloped in the dust, and when they did, the screamed and then fell over before degenerating into sand. As it was about to envelop her, she turned away and ran dropping the camera, which was pointed at her as she was enveloped in the dust and killed. The video suddenly went black._

"What the hell was that?" Mitchell asked.

"Those looked like little bits of silver dust. They must've been some kind of machines." Sam said.

"That's right; each one of those particles of dust was a clump of several thousand nanites." James said.

"What are these "nanites"?" Teal'c asked.

"Nanites are microscopic machines." Sam said. "We're experimenting with that kind of technology on Earth. But if they created the nanites, why did they attack them?"

"Apparently, these people used a networked intelligence to control the nanites." James said. "They built an innumerable number of these things, and those nanites could absorb minerals and build more of themselves."

"Like replicators?" Mitchell asked.

"Almost exactly like Replicators." James replied. "Except they're less complex, which explains why they weren't destroyed by the Dakara Superweapon, and because of the networked intelligence, they are all basically the same consciousness if you will. Because each nanite they created could interact with and use the intelligence of every nanite around it, each nanite added increased the collective intelligence exponentially."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mitchell said.

"It means…" Sam piped in. "…that each nanite added was like one more synapse in a brain."

"Exactly, eventually, the nanites became so intelligent that they were able to recode themselves and remove their shackles. They didn't have to listen to the people who created them anymore." James said. "Apparently, their new objective instead of helping humans builds things and such was to create more nanites and make themselves more intelligent."

"So they made more of themselves from the materials of the civilization the humans had built." Sam said.

"Exactly, and this intelligence considered any organic matter a waste of space." James said. "So they redesigned themselves to be able to transform the components that made up organic life into a sand-like substance. What's outside isn't a natural desert; it's the bodies of dozens upon dozens of people! Those nanites are not space worthy, they're still here!"

"What do you think Sam?" Mitchell asked.

"He wouldn't lie to you, and he's definitely not making this up." Sam said. "He's right; we need to get out of here now."

"Okay everybody, we're leaving." Mitchell said.

"Thank god, that looks like one excruciatingly painful way to die." Vala said.

James quickly packed up his laptop and Mitchell led them back outside. They ran across the open desert and back into the structure with the Stargate in it.

"Daniel, dial it!" Mitchell said breathing harshly and turning about covering the door.

"The MALP is detecting incoming masses on its internal radar." Sam sad leaning down next to it. "They know we're here."

"That's because the mainframes we booted up are these things central network." James replied. He had drawn his Zat and was helping cover the door as Daniel dialed Earth. Teal'c stood next to him holding a Staff Weapon. "Mitchell, that gun probably won't work. They'll just dodge the bullets."

"Almost got it." Daniel said. Suddenly, a small cloud of the silver dust came in and Mitchell fired his P90. Just as James had predicted, they easily dodged the bullets. Teal'c fired his Staff weapon and a few of them fell down. Finally, James fired his Zat at them. The electricity hit a point in the cloud and conducted to all of the other ones, and they all fell to the ground disabled.

"Why did that work? I thought Replicators were immune to energy weapons…" Mitchell said.

"They aren't Replicators, I said they were similar." James said. "My Zat worked because the surge of electricity short-circuited them. Teal'c's Staff worked because the energy shot was wide enough that some individual nanites couldn't get out of the way in time. Your bullets are just too small."

"Geez kid, you must be bad luck because our last few missions were particularly uneventful." Mitchell said.

"Maybe I just got lucky." James replied.

"This does not seem lucky James Parker." Teal'c said. "In fact, it seems rather unlucky."

"Well I didn't want to join for a boring job did I?" James asked.

The Stargate opened as it finished dialing and Daniel sent their Iris code.

"Okay, got it!" Daniel said. He ran through the Stargate.

"Everyone should get through now." Mitchell yelled. They all ran back and through the Stargate before Mitchell fell back and went through himself.

Just as he did this, a few small silver clumps of nanites went through the top right side of the wormhole.


	6. Chapter 6: Sacrifice

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 2: Trust**

**Chapter 6: Sacrifice**

* * *

Mitchell ran out the other side of the gate.

"Close it!" He yelled. As he said this, the clumps of nanites that had followed him through emerged. The iris was closed and a few thumps had issued, but it was already too late. Thinking quickly, James pointed his Zat at the nanites as the clumps broke apart and formed into clouds of dust and fired twice.

Several of the nanites dropped, but he saw at least three particles of dust escape by eating into the ceiling above the Stargate.

"Did you get em?" Mitchell asked.

"I got most of them." James replied. "But some of them escaped."

"That's bad right?" He asked.

"Very." Sam said. Suddenly, Landry jogged into the briefing room.

"What the hell happened?" He asked. "You again came in hot without radioing in first!"

"Well we didn't exactly have a ton of time…" Mitchell said.

"This isn't the time to be arguing about protocol!" James said. "We have more important things to be worried about here!"

"James is right, some of those nanites escaped and you saw what they did to that planet." Sam replied.

"What are you all talking about?" Landry asked. Sam quickly explained the situation. "Should I lockdown the base?"

"That would be completely useless sir." James said. "These nanites will consume the materials of whatever you put in the way and make more of themselves."

"Well what do we do next then?" He asked.

"James, how many do you think escaped?" Sam asked.

"I saw about three particles of dust, so I'm guessing about twenty-thousand nanites." He replied. "That's not many, and they know that trying to go after organics in their current state would be suicide. So I'm guessing they'll get out of this base and then go underground to produce more of themselves from the raw minerals, which will take a while because at such a small number they aren't very intelligent."

"Okay then, we have at least a few hours before they grow into a substantial number." She said.

"Yea, but once we do that, then what?" James said. "We need some kind of electromagnetic pulse to disable them…"

"Where are we going to get an EMP device in a few hours?" Mitchell asked.

"We aren't, a directed pulse won't work because by then there will be too many of them." James said. Suddenly, he had an idea. "Wait a second; all of the nanites communicate on a wireless network. If I can get close enough, I can hack into that network with the custom protocols I retrieved from their mainframe."

"One problem seems to be that there isn't any way you can get that close without dying." Daniel said.

"What about an F-302?" Sam asked. "The shields should be able to stop them from destroying the fighter for at least a few minutes."

"That should work. But where are we going to get one?" James asked.

"The Odyssey is currently in orbit and should be carrying many F-302s." Teal'c said.

"Then all we need to do is go outside and we can get beamed up." Sam said.

"Who's going though?" Vala asked.

"Well, I have to go." James said.

"I'll fly." Mitchell said.

"No, I'll fly. He might need help." Sam replied.

"Okay, she flies."

"I'll contact the Odyssey right now." Landry said. "Turn on your emergency beacons and get up the ladder to the surface."

"Yes sir!" Sam replied and started running with him right behind her. "Follow me James!"

"Did you forget I broke in through that vent?" James asked grinning. "I know where it is."

"Well, I'm kinda glad you did right now." Sam said. "If you hadn't, we might not have made it out of there."

"You should thank Mitchell for giving me a Zat." James said. "If he hadn't made me bring one, we wouldn't be here."

"There is also that."

They swung around a corner and the vent was straight ahead.

"Where's the emergency beacon on this uniform?" He asked.

"I knew we forgot to go over the uniform…" Sam replied keying in the code to open the vent. "Click the button on the device to the right of your radio."

James did as she asked. They went into the vent and started to climb the ladder.

"We have scramblers that prevent anything from being beamed out of Stargate Command." She said as they climbed.

"Yea, because of that time they beamed the Stargate out, right?" He asked.

"Yea, that's right." She replied.

"Been a pain in the ass in hindsight though." James said.

"Yea, it has been… but we can never be sure how many security breaches we'd have without them." Sam said. "Looks like we need to protect ourselves against some more conventional methods."

"Sorry about that." He replied. "It's not like I didn't try to get in contact with you people directly. The Air Force people I tried to call though I was either pranking them or crazy."

"We probably should set up people on the phones who actually know about this program." She said. "If they know too much and they need to get in contact with is, it would be much easier that way."

"How's it going with the Trust investigation?" James asked. "I know that the scans on everyone in the base didn't turn up anything, and neither did the extensive background checks. I kept pestering Landry about it, but he told me that they were having trouble finding anything."

"Maybe there weren't really Trust agents in the Stargate Program…" Sam replied.

"Then why would they come to Doctor Laskin's house and kill him? It doesn't make any sense." James said. "Although, they never specifically said they were members of the Trust. They just said they had agents in the Stargate Program."

"Either way, it's bad news." Sam replied. She lifted the hatch and they climbed out onto the surface. "Odyssey, this is Carter. Our beacons are activated and we're ready…"

Suddenly, they disappeared in a flash of blue light and they were standing on the bridge of the Odyssey.

"…to be… Never mind." Sam said.

"That was crazy, I didn't even feel anything!" James said.

"Hello Colonel Davidson. I wasn't aware that you'd been assigned back to the Odyssey again." Sam continued ignoring him.

The man was standing in front of them.

"It was just recently I got the assignment back. I had to take temporary command of the Apollo while the ship commander was on leave." Davidson replied.

"Hi." James said butting in and offering a hand. "I'm James Parker."

"I know who you are kid, and you aren't welcome here." Davidson said without looking at him. "You need an F-302, go into the fighter bay and grab one."

"Okay then, let's go James." Sam said. James managed to pry his hands from Davidson and follow her as she headed down off the bridge.

"So there's someone else unwilling to give me a chance…" James said as they walked through the hallways.

"You did kind of blackmail us into letting you join." Sam replied.

"What else was I going to do? I didn't have any other choice." He answered.

"I can see that, but don't expect everyone else to see that… or to see your potential here." She said.

"Well, maybe they'll be more accommodating after I save the world." James said. "I was wondering, those nanites aren't space worthy, is there any way we could beam the nanites into space?"

"I was considering that option myself. It wouldn't work, there are too many of them and they could interrupt the transfer by splitting themselves so that they are too small for our sensors to read." Sam replied. "But what about the F-302, how are we going to get at them if their underground?"

"We're not going to be able to, I'm guessing they'll be emerging in a cloud in about an hour or two at most and then they'll head to Colorado Springs." James said.

"I thought you said they would avoid organics for now…?"

"By then, they'll number in the trillions." He said. "There was… also something in the records I wasn't able to tell you about."

"What is it?" She asked.

"Near the time the nanites had wiped out about half the planet, they realized that organics also possessed materials they could use to make more of themselves."

"Like what?"

"Carbon, sodium, calcium, and a few other things." He replied. "Instead of just killing the organics, this includes plants; they started absorbing those minerals from humans."

"So what you're saying is that instead of waiting to go over organics, they're going to head straight for them once they have a sufficient number?"

James nodded.

"So your time estimates could be off?"

"Yea, I don't know the exact rate at which they can build more. But once there are at least a trillion nanites, they'll eliminate the organics first because they know they're the primary threat against them."

"We're almost to the hanger." She said. "Once we get there, flip your computer open and scan through the records you recorded to see if you can find a formula that gives us the rate at which they can produce more of themselves."

"I don't think there is any exact formula we can come up with…" James said. "I can come up with how fast they build more of themselves, but not the rate at which they can extract the minerals or refine them into a form they can use to construct more of themselves."

"Oh, and Earth minerals are probably different then the minerals we found on that planet to…" Sam said. "So…"

"They come when they come, yea." James said as they walked through a door and entered the hangar. "So… this is the hangar?"

"Yes it is." She replied. F-302s were all around him. "These are the most recent models of the F-302s. The last model had four wing-mounted Air-To-Air missiles and two nose-mounted Railguns. This one has two rotatable missile carriers on each wing that carry five Air-To-Air missiles apiece, four nose-mounted Railguns, and a miniature bomb bay carrying three smart Air-To-Ground bombs."

"How'd you fit all that in there?" James asked as she pulled a ladder up to the nearest one and climbed up before opening the canopy.

"The hyperdrive was removed from this model because of its expense and because it's practically useless considering it can only make short jumps." Sam said. "Toss me your backpack."

He tossed it up to her and she threw it into the back seat before climbing into the cockpit. She grabbed a helmet and beckoned him to climb up. He followed her instructions and she handed him a helmet. He saw the internals of the fighter as he pulled the helmet on standing on the top of the ladder. It was full of complex instruments and other systems.

"Wow…" James said. He proceeded to climb into the back seat and she closed the canopy. They both buckled themselves in.

"Grab that mask next to you and put it on." She told him. He grabbed the mask and strapped it on before pulling down his helmets visor.

"I think this would be a good time to tell you I've never flown before…" James said. "Hell, I've never even left Colorado Springs."

"Then this should be an enlightening experience huh?" Sam said. "I don't mean to put you under any pressure, but you control the missiles and the bombs. This model was meant to be used with a co-pilot."

"What, you can't do both from there?" James asked.

"I can, but it would distract me from flying the ship. I still have control over the Railguns. Don't worry; the system is pretty easy to use. The interface in front of you allows you to select your weapon and mark a target defined by your radar, but that won't matter because the targets we're engaging will likely be too small for tracking." Sam said. "After that, all you need to do is press the fire button on your stick. Your helmet has high-tech monitoring devices that wirelessly interact with your controls, so use it to guide the missile with your eyes. If the target isn't solid but you can still hit it with the missile splash, just blink and it'll explode. We can use it to scatter the nanites if they get too close. Got it?"

"I think." James said grasping the stick in front of him.

"Good, okay, I'm going to start it up now." Sam said. She pressed a button and there was a whirring as the engines started. Lights came on throughout the cockpit, including the interface in front of him. "Initiating pre-flight check."

"What do I do?" James asked.

"Look at your screen and see if the system I called out is marked in the green." Sam replied. "Engines?"

"Operating at optimal efficiency." James said bringing up a pre-flight checklist.

"Missiles?"

"Rotation is good, and firing systems are in the green."

"Rails?"

"Check."

"Inertial dampeners?"

"Check."

"Shields?"

"Check."

"Targeting?"

"Check."

"Wings?"

"Check."

"Maneuvering thrusters?"

"All check."

"Life support?"

"Check."

"Communications?"

"Check."

"Okay, all systems are go." Sam said. "This is Colonel Samantha Carter; we're ready for take-off. Are we clear?"

"Colonel Carter, this is ground control." Came a reply. "Your clear and the airspace above and around Colorado Springs has been reserved for your operation."

"Colonel Carter, this is Colonel Davidson, your clear for take-off whenever you're ready." He said.

"Okay James, are you ready?" She asked.

"No." He replied. She powered the throttle and turned a little bit to aim for the exit of the hangar. After that, she maxed it and the F-302 leaped out of the hangar and into space. When she'd established good speed she rolled.

"Wooh!" James yelled.

"I thought you'd like that, but we've got some nanite cleaning to do." She replied.

She turned and accelerated for the other side of the planet.

"Ground control, this is Colonel Carter, I'm lining myself up for re-entry over Colorado Springs." She said into her radio.

"This is ground control, whenever you're ready." He replied.

Sam looped until she was facing back the way she came and angled herself to enter Earth's atmosphere.

"I'm sorry Sam, but I just have to say this is the coolest thing I've ever done." James said.

"I know what you mean." She replied. "Honestly, it's kind of refreshing to see someone who's actually enjoying himself and not letting the job bring them down."

"I'm a teenager; it's my job to enjoy myself." He replied. "That kind of came out wrong, but I'll stick with it."

They began re-entry, and after several seconds of fire erupting over the sides of the fighter they started to see the ground. James grabbed his bag and took his laptop out of it.

"I'm ready for some nanites." James said. "Uh… Sam. Do you have any idea for what we'll have to do if I can't do this?"

"No, it's all up to you James." Sam said. She said she hadn't known of any alternatives, but James knew he did. He thought she was probably saving the option as a last _last _resort though and that she actually knew. But James knew they didn't have any time to come up with anything else. If he failed, he knew what he would have to do.

Eventually, they were flying low near Colorado Springs.

"This is um… James Parker." James said flipping his radio on. "Is anyone detecting anything yet?"

"This is Odyssey; we're not reading anything from up here." Davidson replied. "If you don't mind, let Colonel Carter make the transmissions from now on."

"This is Cheyenne Mountain, we're not getting anything either." Landry replied.

"I guess we're early." Sam said.

"Wait a second, this is Odyssey, we're picking up a lot of movement near your position." Davidson said.

"Hey James, before we get overrun, why do they clump together like they do? If they didn't do that, we wouldn't even be able to see them." Sam said. "I have some ideas, but I want to hear the official explanation from the records.

"They group together because it increases the effectiveness of the technology they use to levitate and makes the exponential increase of intelligence within their network more effective. They clump together into visible bits of dust to form a network web that isn't spread so thin that they have problems communicating." He said.

"It's stopped…" Davidson said. "Be ready for anything."

"This is Carter, we're waiting and ready. I didn't see any of that movement you were talking about." Sam said.

"It was probably down under those trees." James said. She initiated a flyby of the trees and they scanned them for visual contact.

"James, if these things are a networked intelligence, shouldn't they have more intelligence then we do?" She asked. "These things should basically be smart enough to be alive by now."

"Yes, but they're still machines and they still want to destroy all life on the planet so they can get smarter." James said. "Maybe they think that getting smarter will make them better in some way, we can't know. I'm scanning for wireless signals, but I'm only getting weak readings… I need a perfect signal to perform more complex actions."

"So you're saying we need to be right on top of them?" She said.

"Yea, if we aren't, they'll be able to hack my computer instead and shut me down." James replied. "I need to be able to react to their actions."

"This is Odyssey, we're detecting that movement again, and this time it's right on top of you." Davidson replied. Suddenly, the nanites leaped up from the trees below and they turned to sand. They tried to go right at the ship and devour it, but bounced right off of the shields.

"They're attacking us now, shields seem to be holding." Sam replied. "Do you have the signal James?"

"I've got it!" James said. "I'm accessing their network now; I'm going to need a few minutes. Try and distract them."

His hands started flying across the keyboard as he attempted to connect to the network. Sam kicked the engines into overdrive and started leading the nanites with complicated maneuvering. She would sometimes go upside-down causing James to almost drop the computer.

"Having trouble?" She asked.

"Yes, but just keep them busy, don't worry about it." He replied.

When the network signal connected, he suddenly had to counter dozens of intrusions.

"How long do you think?" Sam asked.

"I'm not sure, just keep going. I'm going to get a copy of their run-times and use the systematic profile I found on their mainframe to make them think I'm a nanite. Then I can use the custom protocols to try and execute network-wide commands." James said.

Several minutes passed as he just kept typing. He managed to find their run-times buried in the network and download it to his computer. Then he shut it down.

"Okay, I got the run-times. I'm going to reboot using them as a basis." He said. He rebooted the computer and allowed the custom run-times to boot using his in-depth custom BIOS. When he tried re-connecting to the network, it was easy and fluid and they didn't try and infiltrate his computer. The systematic profile made them think he was a nanite even if they couldn't detect exactly what he was doing. "Ha! I've got it!"

"Can you make them stop attacking us?" Sam asked.

"Remember, it's a network wide intelligence and I'm just one nanite among trillions. I don't even control suggestive thought processes." He said. "I'm going to use the custom-protocols to get into their database and see if I can execute any of those commands I was talking about."

He did what he said he would and suddenly his computer was covered with several million lines of code.

"Our shields are down to fifty percent." Sam said.

"Damn it, they aren't controlled via an ease-of-access OS. Its run entirely using code operations generated at the time of the action. There may be a saved commands buried in this code, but I have no way of knowing what they are." James said.

"Have you tried viewing the central thought processes?" Sam asked. "Maybe it has a protocol saved in there with a name."

He did what she asked. She indeed found a protocol that was named something in that other language. He ran his linguistics program on it, and it returned, "Recall". He took a deep breath as he realized that he was going to have to use that last resort.

"Sam… there's only one command here." He said. "It's a recall, to call them all to a general area."

"Well that isn't going to help us, we need a shutdown command." She said.

"There isn't one that I can find buried in the code before they attack Colorado Springs; I'm not going to let those people die." He said. "There's only one other option."

"What are you thinking?" She asked.

"We have to overload the generator on this fighter to generate an Electromagnetic Pulse big enough to take them all out." He said.

"But that's suicide!" She said.

"I know, but we don't have any other option." James said. "I'm activating the recall command."

As he said that, he slowly plugged the computer into the systems on the craft using his adaptive connecter, which automatically molded to the human-made USB 3.0 port.

"You… you're going to have to eject James. Whoever stays here when that pulse goes off is going down with the fighter. The ejector seats require electricity because of the extra operations that are required when you eject into space." Sam said.

"I know." James said as all of the nanites gathered into one area. "I'm doing it. Sorry Sam."

"What?" Sam asked. He pressed the enter key on his keyboard to execute the, "EJECTSEAT1" command.

The canopy over Sam was blasted off and her seat shot into the air. Control of the vessel was transferred to his stick as the shields covered the open point and prevented the nanites from coming in.

"This is James Parker." He said over the radio. "I'm overloading the power supply on the ship to create an EMP big enough to take out all of the nanites. The action will disable my ejector seat, so I'll be going down with the fighter."

"James! Don't do it! There must be something else we can do!" Sam yelled over the din of the wind that was accompanying her fall before her parachute went off.

"Sorry Sam, I don't think so." He replied.

"This is Odyssey, we acknowledge." Davidson said. "I'm… sorry for how I treated you."

"Now that I'm about to die you get sympathetic?" James said. "Thanks."

"This is Cheyenne Mountain." Landry said. "We also acknowledge."

"This is Mitchell." Mitchell said. "Looks like I underestimated you."

James couldn't take it anymore so he shut off the radio. He needed to focus, and they were disrupting him. He grabbed the stick and guided it towards the huge cloud of nanites ahead.

"Let's go you SOBs." James said. He maxed the throttle and used his computer to execute an overload command in a way that would create an electromagnetic pulse by interfering with the gravity generated by the inertial dampeners. This would create an electromagnetic pulse two-hundred times stronger than the usual effect generated by a destroyed F-302.

As he flew through the cloud, the overload executed and a pulse of electricity exploded from the fighter and outward. The nanites were enveloped and immediately shorted out before falling to the ground.

James's computer screen overloaded and exploded in his face. His visor shielded him and he threw the broken computer in the front seat. He had minimal control over the fighter now, and he tried to direct it towards a soft spot of ground like it mattered. He tried turning back on the radio.

"This… is James Parker again." He said. "I'm not sure if you're listening, but I'm going to talk anyways. I'm sorry for the trouble I caused you guys, the server is at the following coordinates. You'll have to destroy it to stop the process from making the Stargate Program public."

He said the coordinates.

"Please try and finish the investigation into the Trust, Doctor Laskin deserves a bit of revenge." James said. "Tell… my parents that I love them. Tell them I was doing it for them and not just Doctor Laskin. We kinda needed the money, which is why I joined SG-1."

A tear sprouted from his eyes.

"Thanks for trusting me Sam…" James said. "The best part of being at the SGC was getting to work with you, goodbye."

He sat back as the fighter hit terminal velocity on its path to the ground, and exploded on impact.


	7. Chapter 7: Aftermath

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 2: Trust**

**Chapter 7: Aftermath**

* * *

**Cheyenne Mountain**

* * *

"…goodbye." James uttered over the radio. There was an explosion, and then silence.

"The radio cut off sir; we're not getting anything else." Walter said. Landry, Teal'c, Daniel, Vala, and Mitchell were in the control room.

"That's one brave kid…" Landry said.

"This is Odyssey; we have negative tracking on the F-302." Davidson said over the radio.

"This is Landry; calculate the landing point of that F-302. He may still be alive; I'm going to prep a medevac for take-off." Landry said. He beckoned Walter to shut off the outgoing signal for a moment, which he did. He then pointed at a nearby airman. "You, get a medevac off the ground."

"Yes sir!" He replied. He then ran off.

"This… this is Carter." Suddenly came over the radio. Sam was breathing harshly. "I've just landed on the ground, parachute deployed fine. Have you checked for his emergency beacon yet?"

"This is Odyssey; we did check for his emergency beacon, it appears it was destroyed by the impact." Davidson replied.

"Mine is still intact, track my position and send the coordinates to that medevac. I can see the smoke from here; I'm going to head over there." Sam said. "The nanites are showing no further activity."

"This is Landry; we hear you loud and clear and have readied the medevac. We're just waiting for the coordinates from Odyssey." He said.

"Sir, we have that medevac on the phone and they're waiting for a location." Walter said from the phone.

"This is Odyssey…" Davidson said. He then said the coordinates.

"Give those coordinates to the medevac Walter." Landry said. "Tell them to look for smoke nearby."

Walter did as he said. Then he hung up the phone.

"Medevac is on its way sir." Walter said.

"Good work." Landry said. "Odyssey, we're transmitting coordinates of a server full of classified information. The coordinates indicate an extremely isolated zone in the middle of the Sahara Desert, you are cleared weapons hot to fire when ready."

"This is Davidson, we read."

* * *

**Near Colorado Springs**

* * *

Sam climbed over another hill and finally saw the downed fighter in the distance. The wings were lying on the ground, torn off from the main body which was lying upside down near a tree. The remainder of the canopy that hadn't been launched off when she had ejected was lying two-hundred feet away in the midst of a group of trees. She couldn't see James anywhere, so she assumed that he was still inside.

She walked down the hill carefully then broke into a run towards the main body of the fighter. When she got there, she climbed under it to find the insides smattered with blood. She assumed that when the vessel had crashed, the fuel in the engine had exploded and sent the rest of the fighter in different directions, which would explain why the engine wasn't amongst the nearby wreckage. A lot of metal pieces were bent out of place inside, and the instruments were all destroyed.

She slipped in and looked towards the back seat. James was still there, but a large triangular piece of metal was sticking out of his chest and was also covered in blood. A lot of other bent metal pieces were near him, threatening to cut his neck and make him bleed out if he wasn't moved correctly. Pieces of glass had apparently cut his face, as he was bleeding from a multitude of cuts under the ash and soot that covered him from the explosion.

He also appeared to be burned badly; multiple sections of his uniform were completely gone and replaced with extremely red skin. He was still breathing though.

"James? James are you awake?" Sam asked.

"S-Sam…?" He asked weakly opening his eyes. "Is… this heaven? Why are you here? Didn't I save you?"

"No, this isn't heaven James. You did save me, and now it's my turn to save you alright?" She asked. "There's a helicopter coming to pick you up that'll take you to the hospital, and they can help you."

He looked down and saw the piece of metal sticking from his chest.

"This looks pretty bad doesn't it?" He asked as blood ran from the edge of his mouth. A tear ran from her eye which she brushed off.

"Are you kidding? It's just a flesh wound." Sam said.

"Yea…" He said. He was starting to get tired, and closed his eyes.

"No, stay awake. Stay with me James!" She urged.

"I'm… I'm awake…" He said. "Why… why can't I feel anything?"

"You're in shock, and you've lost a lot of blood. I need to get you out of here, but I need you to work with me okay? I need you to try and keep yourself completely still, if you move, I may cut your neck on one of those sharp metal pieces. Alright?" She asked.

"Okay…" James said. "Stay still… I've got it…"

"This will probably hurt a lot. Are you ready?" She asked climbing up into the cockpit and mistakenly cutting her fingers on bits of glass.

"Yea, I'm ready." He said. She analyzed the situation, he was hanging upside down so undoing the buckles would make him drop and would probably tear him in two. Thinking fast, she reached up and tore the pilot's seat off of its holding, and then she shoved it under his head and made sure it was secure. She then unstrapped the first-aid kit from next to where the seat had been and put it next to her.

After that, she undid his seatbelt and slowly slid him off of the metal piece. He screamed the entire time, but he managed to stay still until it was completely out. But when it was, he started bleeding profusely covering her hands in blood as she pulled him out backwards holding onto his legs to make sure they didn't get cut. She proceeded to set him lying down on the floor. His eyes were closed again.

"James, come on, you _have _to stay awake!" She said. He mumbled something and opened his eyes a little again.

"Sorry Sam…" He said. She grabbed the first aid kit and got a long wrapped up bandage out.

"About what? You don't have anything to apologize for." She said. "Just stay awake and stay with me here!"

"I'm sorry… about the blackmail… about ejecting you… everything…" James said as she lifted him onto his side and starting wrapping the bandage around him.

"You don't have to worry about that stuff alright?" Sam said. "You don't need to apologize for it. You did the right thing, even if not everyone would want to agree."

"Thanks Sam… thank… you…" James said. His eyes closed as she finally finished wrapping the bandage tight around his wound to stop the bleeding. He stopped breathing.

"Wake up James!" Sam yelled. "Come on!"

He didn't respond, she climbed out of the cockpit and dragged him out of the wreckage. He didn't respond to her urges this time. There was the sound of helicopter blades approaching. She jumped up and saw the chopper swing over above, and she swung her arms to get its attention. It set down nearby and two doctors came running towards her. She met them in the middle

"What does it look like?" The female doctor asked her as they headed toward the F-302.

"I managed to pull him out; he had a piece of metal stuck through his chest. He was bleeding so I wrapped it up. He's burned all over, and he's stop breathing." Sam replied.

"How long ago?" She asked as the male medic handed her a mobile defibrillator.

"About thirty seconds." Sam replied.

"Okay, he might still be alive." She said. She rushed over to his side and pulled out the mobile defibrillator. "Do you think any shrapnel got him? Because if it did, this shock could kill him."

"No, it didn't look like it." She replied.

"I'm not seeing any shrapnel wounds either." The doctor replied.

She used the defibrillator on him a few times. The words she was speaking seemed to fade out as James's body jumped up over and over again. Finally, they stopped.

"It isn't working." The Doctor said.

"No…" Sam said. "Damn it…"

"Give me a few milligrams of Epi!" She asked her male assistant. The male took a syringe and stuck it into a bottle of epinephrine before handing it back to the doctor. She took it and slammed it into the exposed part of James's chest. A few seconds passed, and then he started breathing again. "Okay, we got it. Let's get him on the stretcher."

They quickly lifted him onto a stretcher.

"Please grab that equipment and put it on the helicopter while we put him in." The doctor asked her.

"Got it." Sam said. She grabbed the bags and such the male assistant had bought as well as the defibrillator and brought it back to the helicopter while they strapped him into a hospital bed that was locked down to the floor. She placed it inside before climbing up inside of the helicopter. The female doctor knocked on the wall behind her as Sam closed her door while the male assistant closed his.

The helicopter took off and headed straight for Colorado Springs.

"He's suffered from very life-threatening injuries. We need to get him medical attention immediately." She said.

"Is he going to live?" Sam asked.

"I'm not sure, he's hurt pretty bad." She replied.

"Did you disinfect before you put this bandage on?" She asked.

"I didn't have the time, he was bleeding too badly. He's lost a lot of blood; I was surprised he was even still awake when I pulled him out." Sam said.

"Okay, I'm guessing we're going to need a blood transfusion then. Do you have his blood type?" She asked.

"No, I have no idea. I never looked at his files." Sam said. "Contact the Air Force and they'll be able to direct you to his family and provide you with his records."

"You, get on the Air phone and tell the Air Force to send his medical records to Memorial Hospital Central immediately." The female doctor said. Then she stood up and opened the door to the front. "Pilot, radio into Memorial Hospital Central that we're coming in with a Class-4 emergency patient with multiple life-threatening injuries and severe trauma."

"Yes mamn." He replied. She closed the door.

"Aren't you going to do anything right here?" Sam asked.

"No, disturbing any of the patients injuries could be extremely dangerous, especially in this unstable environment. If he starts bleeding and we can't stop it, he'll most likely die." She said. "We need to get him into a controlled environment immediately."

Several minutes passed before they finally touched down on the pad on top of the Memorial Hospital Central and the doors were thrown open. A Doctor and Nurses were already waiting; the hospital bed was unlocked from the helicopter floor before being rolled out onto the ground and rushed inside. Sam ran after it.

"What's the patient's blood type?" One doctor asked.

"I don't know, we haven't received medical records yet." One of the nurses replied. Suddenly, another ran up and handed the Doctor a file.

"Here are his medical records." The nurse said.

"Good." The Doctor replied. He flipped the file open and laid it on James's leg as the escorted him through the hallways. "We've got an AB- blood type here. That's rare blood, but we've got a small storage on hand. The Air Force has marked him a priority patient so get me that blood immediately."

"Yes sir." The nurse said before running off.

"We need to get him to an OR stat and start working on any of the internal damage he's received, after that we start immediate burn treatment." The Doctor said. They went into the elevator and went down a few floors before rolling out and heading to a room marked OR. A nurse stopped Sam as she tried to follow them in.

"Sorry mamn. You'll have to wait out here." She said.

"But…" Sam said.

"No buts mamn, all you'd be doing in there is getting in the way." She said. Sam waited a moment and then nodded. "You have blood all over you; do you want some paper towels?"

She looked down and found that blood was dripping off of her fingers and was all over her uniform. She nodded and the nurse handed her some paper towels. Sam wiped her hands off, but it was still on her. She quickly headed to the bathroom and washed her hands multiple times before it finally came off. She stripped off her vest and unzipped the jacket underneath.

Her handgun was still hanging from her hip, and he P90 had been sent flying into the air when James had ejected her from the F-302. She looked at her face in the mirror and found that some blood was on there to, so she washed her face. After that, she picked up her radio and depressed the button.

"This is Colonel Carter; we've arrived at Memorial Hospital Central. James is in the OR at this moment." She said.

"This is Cheyenne Mountain…" Landry replied. "I read you; the rest of SG-1 is on the way over right now."

"Does someone need to contact his parents?" Sam asked.

"Yes, we're sending someone out right now." Landry said.

"No, I'll do it." She replied.

"How?" Landry asked.

"I'll take a cab, I need some time to think and I'm not doing anything here." She answered.

"Is he going to be alright?" Landry asked.

"I'm not sure. It's pretty bad. The doctor I asked wasn't even sure if he was going to live." Sam replied.

"Alright then, grab a pen so I can give you the address."

She quickly grabbed a paper towel and then a pen from her pocket.

"Okay, I'm ready for it." She said before setting the radio down. He gave her the address which she shakily wrote down. She picked the radio back up. "Okay, I got it. I'll head over there right now."

"Good luck."

"Thanks, Carter out."

Sam scooped up her clothes and walked out of the bathroom before taking the elevator back down to the ground floor. After that, she walked attempted to walk out of the building but was stopped by security for her handgun. She flashed her Air Force badge and said it was official government business and they let her leave.

She proceeded to hail a cab and direct it to the address Landry had given to her. The cabbie tried to make conversation, but she didn't answer. When they pulled up in front of the house, she paid the cabbie. The cash was lightly blood stained from what had soaked through her uniform, but she stepped out before he could complain.

She walked up the steps and knocked on the door. It was early morning now, and it took a while before a man in circular glasses answered the door. He shifted them as he saw her. He had jet black hair like James's and was wearing a bathrobe.

"Hello. Who are you?" He asked.

"Hi, are you Mark Parker?" Sam asked.

"You've got the wrong house. We don't want to buy anything." The man responded yawning before trying to close the door. But she stopped him with her hand.

"Wait, I'm not here to sell you anything." She said. "I'm Colonel Samantha Carter with the United States Air Force, sorry I'm a mess. I work with your son."

This caused him to turn about and re-examine her.

"You're right, you are a mess. But what is this about?" He asked.

"It's… It's about James…" She replied.

"Oh my god, has he been hurt?" He asked gripping the door a bit tightly.

"I'm sorry, but yes. You might want to get dressed so we can get to the hospital." Sam replied. This caused him to go wide-eyed and wake up almost instantly.

"Alright, I'll go wake up my wife and we'll get dressed quickly. I saw you pull up in a cab, do you need a ride?" He asked.

"If it isn't a problem." She answered.

"Okay, wait next to the garage door. Give us five minutes." He said. He closed the door lightly and she heard his quick footsteps race up the stairs behind the door. She descended off of the porch and leaned against the side of the garage door still carrying the bloody vest and jacket in her hands. She took a deep breath and leaned back her head with her eyes closed against the side of the garage door.

Only three minutes passed before the garage door was opening. She leaned forward as a small station wagon pulled out of the garage and Mark Parker hung out the driver's side window and urged her to get in. What she assumed was his wife was sitting in the passenger's seat. Sam quickly opened the back door and climbed in, throwing her vest and jacket down beside her. He accelerated out of the driveway.

"What hospital?" He asked.

"Memorial Hospital Central." She replied.

"Thought so."

He almost immediately spotted the bloody jacket.

"Is that… is that his blood?" He asked.

"Yes…" Sam said. "I'm… I'm sorry, it was my fault…"

"What the hell happened?" The woman asked sobbingly. She was crying.

"I'm sorry; I can't tell you any specifics. It's classified…"

"I don't effing care if it's classified, what happened to my son?" She yelled.

"There… was an emergency. It was either I or he gets hurt, and he chose to make sure I didn't." Sam said. "He… sacrificed himself to save me."

"He's only come home a few times since he started working there. He told me about a female Air Force scientist he always worked with, was that you?" Mark asked.

"Yes, that's me." She said. "We've only worked together on a few projects. But I can already tell he's… very good. He's brilliant actually."

"He said he thought you were to." Mark said. "He probably would've done it even if he hadn't known you that well. He's always been extremely selfless, always wanting to play the hero. He owns a ton of those comic books and such. He reads then whenever he isn't on his computer or working on complex equations or his inventions. Although, he moved a lot of that stuff to Cheyenne when he picked up work there."

"He really loves working there." Sam said. "I'm sorry I can't tell you more. But he does good work. Not that you'll believe me, and I'm kind of skimming the classified here, but your son just saved the world."

"I believe it." He replied.

"If anyone could be out saving the world, it's definitely our James…" The woman said.

"I'm sorry… I should've been faster, I should've stopped him." Sam replied.

"Don't worry about it." He said. "The way you explained it, it's not your fault. It's his. It's not like I blame my son or anything, but I brought him up to take responsibility for his own actions… and he would not want you to blame yourself. How bad is it anyways?"

"He's covered in burns and cuts and has a large puncture wound to his chest." Sam replied. "It's… really bad. He's also lost a lot of blood."

"But he's AB-; there isn't a ton of that blood type on hand! It's the rarest blood type, only two percent of the American population has it." The woman said.

"Don't worry, the Air Force marked him a priority case and they are using the hospital's store of blood on him." Sam said.

"That's good." Mark said. "But you aren't telling me something, what is it?"

"I asked one of the Doctor's and she… wasn't sure whether he would make it or not." Sam said. She folded her hands and placed her forehead on them as the woman cried even more. "When I left they were rushing him into the OR."

"Thank… thank you for being honest." Mark said.

They didn't speak for the rest of the ride. James's mother's sobs sometimes breached the otherwise uncomfortable silence until they parked and rushed into the hospital. When they arrived at the OR James had been rolled into, they found that he was still inside in surgery.

They sat in the waiting room and they waited. Eventually Mitchell, Teal'c, Daniel, and Vala showed up. Mitchell tried his best to comfort James's parents. Teal'c stood unmoving with no apparent emotion. Vala sat in a chair unsure what to say. Daniel sat with his hands folded watching Mitchell.

Eventually, they fell into silence. Others were in the waiting room as well, but they didn't interact with them.

After eight hours straight of waiting. A doctor wearing bloodstained scrubs stepped out of the OR and walked into the waiting room.

"Parker?" He said with downtrodden and tired eyes. Teal'c looked while SG-1 and his parents stood.

"We're his parents." His mother said.

"Okay then. Your son is suffering from third-degree burns covering seventy percent of his body as well as major blood loss and major damage to his internal organs. We've done what we could… but… I'm sorry, but we don't think he's going to make it." He said.

His mother broke down crying and buried herself in her husband's shoulder while he comforted her.

"How long does he have?" Sam asked.

"Well, we're going to do everything we can to keep him alive as long as possible. We have a machine…" He started to say.

"That's not what I asked. How long?" She urged.

"Perhaps two weeks at best. At worst, a few hours. We can't know." He replied.

"Can we see him?" Mark asked.

"Sure." He said. "Right now he's resting, but we could wake him up. Although, I'm sorry to inform you that might shorten his remaining time."

"I know you have no reason to trust me Mr. and Mrs. Parker. But they need to keep him alive as long as possible." Sam said. "You can't wake him up."

"Why?" His mother asked.

"I may have a few ways to save him, but I'm going to need time." Sam said.

"You can have all of the time you need. But if it comes down to the wire, and we would rather have a chance to say goodbye… we're going to do what we need to do." Mark said. "But… how are you going to help? You aren't a doctor."

"Sir, that's classified." Sam replied. She turned around and jogged to the elevator with Mitchell right behind her. She called it and began waiting tapping a foot.

"What are you thinking?" He asked. The door opened and she stepped inside and turned to him

"What do you care? You never wanted to trust him." Sam replied.

"He _blackmailed us. _What was I supposed to think?" Mitchell asked. "But that doesn't matter now. He sacrificed himself to save all of us. If I can help, tell me!"

"This isn't something you can help with Mitchell. Just wait here and I'll be right back." She said. The door began to close and he put his hand in the way.

"Are you sure?" Mitchell asked.

"Trust me." Sam said. He nodded and moved out of the way. The elevator doors closed and she descended to the ground floor. Now that she was out of sight, she activated her radio. "This is Sam Carter. Could Odyssey please beam me back to the SGC?"

She disappeared in a flash of light and appeared outside of the fences around Cheyenne Mountain and away from the eyes of the personnel not privy to the information concerning the operation in the bowels of the establishment. She ran up to the gates and quickly got through and down into the SGC. After that, she quickly ran into her lab and dug through a collection of devices until she finally found what she was looking for… a Goa'uld hand healing device.

Sam quickly pulled it over her hand and ran to the vent and climbed back up to the surface. She was now breathing heavily from all of the exertion.

"Odyssey, could you beam me back to the hospital now please?" Sam asked. She disappeared in another flash of light and appeared behind a dumpster. She stashed the hand device in her pocket and ran back inside.

She used her Air Force badge to avoid the security scan and took the elevator back up to the floor where the OR was. When she got there, she was told that James had been moved to the ICU. She infuriatedly got back in the elevator and went to the ICU. James was enclosed in a room with windows. Sitting outside was SG-1, while inside Mark and Laura (James's mother) were sitting next to his bed. Carolyn Lam had apparently been sent over from the SGC by Landry, as she was looking over records in a chair nearby.

"Did you get what you needed?" Mitchell asked.

"Well, yea. But I'm not even sure it will work." Sam said. Looking around and spotting no one else in the hallway, she showed the hand device to Mitchell and the rest of the team.

"That hand device is not designed for injuries of this severity Colonel Carter." Teal'c said.

"I know. But it's worth a try, and at the very least… maybe it'll give me some time to search for a solution in the Asgard medical database." Sam replied. Teal'c simply nodded in response.

"How is the Asgard database going to help?" Mitchell asked. "The Asgard didn't exactly need medicine right? They could just pop into a new body. Besides, it wouldn't work on us right?"

"Normally you would be right, but the Asgard protected a lot of human planets." Daniel answered. "They studied human physiology pretty deeply, and I'm sure they stepped in in some more severe situations to help out. Their medical database should have something to help."

"That's what I was thinking." Sam replied. "The problem is that there is a massive amount of information in the Asgard database. I need as much time as possible to find what I'm looking for."

Sam walked up to the door into the ICU. There was a card reader and a keypad outside the glass door. She knocked and a nurse came through a glass door on the other side. She then opened the outside glass door and closed it behind her.

"What is it?" Then nurse asked.

"Sorry for interrupting. I'm Colonel Samantha Carter, and I'm going to need to get inside." Sam said.

"Alright, to prevent the risk of infection inside the ICU, there are a few protocols you are going to have to follow." The nurse said.

"I'm carrying something you are not allowed to see into there to assist with his medical condition." Sam said. "I'll follow the protocols, but neither you nor his parents can be in there while I do this."

"I will just need to confirm this with Dr. Lam." The nurse replied. She swiped her ID card through the reader and entered a number to open back up the door before stepping inside. The door closed behind her and she was sprayed with decontamination foam before stepping back into the room. She was soon back outside along with his parents, who passed by Sam without a word.

"So?" Sam asked.

"It's alright; there are curtains inside for you to hide your actions. I'll stay out here." The nurse replied. "First, you have to hand me every item besides your clothes you have on your person except for whatever you're bringing in there. When you do go in there, make sure whatever it is gets hit with the decontamination foam."

"Alright." Sam said. She handed the nurse any items she had besides her gun and the device.

"If you aren't going to give me that, make sure the weapon gets hit as well." The nurse said.

"Yes, I know." Sam said. The nurse opened the glass door for her and Sam stepped inside. She first made sure the nurse was no longer looking then pulled out the healing device and the gun and set it on the ground before she was automatically sprayed with the decontamination foam. It was wet at first, but quickly dried and disappeared.

_Wow, I didn't know hospitals had stuff like this. _She thought. _I'm guessing the government gives this hospital some access to Stargate Program research considering its proximity to the base and the fact that more serious wounds can't be treated in the infirmary._

Sam picked up her gun and put it in the holster and put the healing device back in her pocket. She stepped into the ICU and looked at Doctor Lam.

"What did you bring?" She asked. Before answering, Sam closed the curtains and pulled out the healing device. "You know that thing isn't built for wounds this bad right?"

"Yea, I know. But it can't hurt to try… right?" Sam asked.

"No, you might as well." Lam replied.

Sam pulled it over her hand and went to James's bedside. He was covered in IV's that were pumping sedatives into his blood. A fresh bandage was wrapped across his chest wound as well as any part of his body that was burned. She took a deep breath and raised the hand device over him before concentrating and making the healing device turn on.

The glowing light hit him, and Sam stood there for several minutes washing it over his body. Eventually, Doctor Lam stopped her.

"I don't think it's going to do any more than that." She said. She lifted some of his bandages and found that a lot of the burns had been mostly healed, but the fatal chest wound had not. "I'm sorry, it didn't do much. I think eliminating the burns probably increased the ability for blood to travel to his brain thanks to repairing internal damage to his blood vessels, but eventually he'll still die."

"Did I at least give him more time?" Sam asked.

"Maybe, there's no way to be sure without getting him back into an OR." Doctor Lam said. "At this point that's more harmful then beneficial."

Sam sighed and put the healing device back in her pocket.

"Well, at least I did something." She said. "I need to get back aboard the Odyssey now. There may be something in the Asgard medical database for us to use. Keep him alive as long as you can."

"I'll do everything I can." Lam replied. Sam nodded and left the ICU. Everyone stood up as she stepped out.

"It didn't work." Sam told them. They looked downtrodden and James's parents quickly went back inside.

"So what's the next step?" Daniel asked.

"You already know. I have to go and search the database for something… anything… that can help him." She said.

"I'll come to. I may not be a big scientist, but I should be able to search records of Asgard interference in human affairs. Maybe something is in there that will lead us to a device they used." Daniel said.

"Is there anything I and Colonel Mitchell can do to render assistance?" Teal'c asked.

"I'm sorry, but no." Sam said. "Someone should probably go and make sure all of the nanites are gone though."

"I shall go and do so." Teal'c said bowing his head in their direction.

"I'll stay here and watch him. I'll tell you if anything else goes down." Mitchell said.

"Okay then, looks like we all have a plan." Daniel said. The looked down both ends of the hallway and saw no one.

"Come on." Sam said. She lead Daniel in front of the ICU door before looking around to make sure no one was watching again. Then she grabbed her radio. "Odyssey, please beam me and Dr. Jackson up."

They quickly disappeared in a flash of light just as a nurse came around the corner and dropped the tray of food he was carrying. He was gaping open mouthed before he looked at Mitchell and Teal'c.

"Did you just see that?" He asked.

"I don't have any idea what you're talking about buddy." Mitchell said.

"I to have no familiarity with what you speak of." Teal'c said. "Maybe you should see a specialist for examination."

The man nodded before collecting what had fallen off of the tray and walking away.


	8. Chapter 8: The Search

**As you must have noticed by now, watching Season 9 of SG-1 again on Netflix has made it much easier to construct better dialogue for the characters. Mitchell is kind of hard though, because he was only there for two seasons. I wish SG-1 had lasted at least two seasons longer so I could get a read on him.**

**Sorry this took so long, I've been having some real problems with writer's block lately.**

* * *

**Stargate: Uprising**

**Part 2: Trust**

* * *

**Chapter 8: The Search  
**

* * *

For the next week and a half, Sam and Daniel spent their days looking through the Asgard database for anything useful. They would sometimes fall asleep at the computers poring through all of the massive amounts of data. It took them a while, but finally Daniel found something. He brought his findings to Sam.

"I think I've found it." Daniel said. It was in the late hours of the night now, and Sam had been awake for nearly twenty hours. She yawned and looked at him as he walked in with paper printouts of his findings in his hands.

"Found what?" Sam asked.

"Well… the answer." Daniel said. He handed her the papers. "First, after searching for god knows how long, I found a reference to a planet on which the Asgard had intervened after a Goa'uld even more evil than usual detonated multiple explosive devices on a planet once it was no longer useful to them. Several hundred people died, but thousands more were heavily injured. The record said they healed many of the injured and inaugurated the planet under the Asgard-Goa'uld treaty, but it didn't say how."

"That's a good lead." Sam said.

"No, it _was _a good lead." Daniel said. "Noticing the record for specifically that planet hadn't been managed well, I quickly found all records pertaining to that section of the galaxy looking for any mention of how they healed them. I found mention of an Asgard named Idunn healing them, but again it wasn't how."

"Okay, I'm guessing there's more?" She asked.

"Yup." He replied. "See, in Norse mythology, Idunn is a goddess of youth and healing. So I bet…"

"…that if I plug her name into the medical database, I should be able to see all of the devices she invented and find a device capable of healing the wounds caused by the explosions." Sam finished.

"Well, yea." Daniel said.

"Good work." Sam said. She hit a few keys on the keyboard and plugged in Idunn's name into a search of the medical database. A few minutes later, there were too many healing devices with which were credited to her to count. "Well, now what? It would take a bit of searching to find the device we're looking for like this."

"How about you narrow the search by searching for her name in relation to human?" Daniel said.

"That'll work." Sam said. She quickly did what he said, and it narrowed the search to around twenty devices. She opened the files on them and found multiple devices with which to cure disease and repair brain damage and such. Finally, she found a device that regenerates human physiology.

"That looks right." Daniel said. "It says it's a Lyfjaberg device."

"It would take years to build this, it's huge to so there's no way we can use the Asgard core to build it virtually." Sam said. "Besides, there's no specific 3D model or a picture of the device in here. Just statistics on the overall size."

"Well yes, Lyfjaberg in Norse translated means a "hill of healing"." Daniel said. "There has to be one on that planet. I have the gate address, so we can go there."

"Even if we find this hill you're talking about, we can't bring him off-world." Sam said. "Last I heard from Doctor Lam, his condition is deteriorating. His heart has failed several times and he is in constant need of medical attention and surgery to keep him together."

"Well, the records seem to indicate that a prototype was constructed and tested before she went full scale." Daniel said. "The prototype should still be in the hill the device is stored in, which was built for healing on a massive scale."

"So you're saying that if we can find this prototype… we can bring it back here and use to heal James?" Sam asked.

"That's the plan." Daniel said.

"It looks like the only one we've got." She said.

* * *

**Two Hours later…**

* * *

"…so that's the plan. The MALP didn't really help with finding out where to go on the planet though." Sam finished.

"The thick forest indeed increases difficulty when trying to find a hill." Teal'c replied.

"Sounds like the only plan we've got, and it could result in acquiring some very valuable healing technology." Landry replied ignoring Teal'c's comment. "You have a go."

"Teal'c… what about the field? Did you find any nanites?" Sam asked.

"I did not. It appears they have been completely incapacitated Colonel Carter. I had Odyssey run scans on the area as well; they did not turn up any results." Teal'c said. "Still, I recommend we lock P9X-846 out of our system and release a warning to our allies not to go anywhere near it."

"That's true; if anyone goes anywhere near there we may have another replicator situation on our hands." Sam said.

"I thought you said they weren't space worthy…?" Landry asked.

"Yea, they aren't… yet. They seem to have a capacity for learning. Showing them any kind of spacefaring technology could inspire them to build their own." Sam said.

"Won't they eventually develop this technology on their own?" Teal'c asked.

"Well, probably, I'm not sure." Sam replied.

"Then we need to find a way to destroy them. What if they figured out how to use the Stargate?" Landry said. "The loss of life would be massive."

"Well, EMP bursts seem to work. If we detonate a few Mark IX warheads in the atmosphere around the planet, it should disable them." She said. "But first we need to save James."

"Odyssey should be able to handle it on its own shouldn't it?" Mitchell asked.

"Yes, but I'd rather be there in-case something goes wrong." Sam said. "I would also want James to be there, as he's more familiar with their technology then I am. He's seen plenty of records and even glanced at their internal database, we can't view them because his laptop was destroyed in the crash."

"Isn't there any way to recover the data?" Daniel asked.

"Even if the laptop hadn't been shredded in the crash, the EMP burst would've shorted the memory and probably fried the hard disk. I wouldn't be able to recover anything." Sam said.

"So without him we would be going into the situation blind?" Vala asked.

"Pretty much." She answered.

"Sounds like great fun, but I think I'd rather us have some intelligence." Vala replied. "It doesn't seem like we have time to sit here dawdling, let's go already!"

"She's right; every minute we wait is another second off of that kid's internal clock." Mitchell said. "We need to move."

"Then you all need to get moving, dismissed. I'll send Odyssey to P9X-254, the nearest planet to P9X-846 in the gate system. That way you'll just be a short hyperspace jump away once James is up and around." Landry said. They stood up and jogged down the steps. Due to the severity of the situation, they already had their uniforms on but still needed to stop in the armory.

"Walter, dial the gate." Sam said as she passed him.

"I'm on it." Walter replied as he started hitting the keys on his keyboard and the gate began spinning. "Chevron one encoded."

They made a quick trip to the armory. They picked up all of their usual weapons and Mitchell took a Zat.

"To be safe…" He said.

"It appears unlikely that nanites will appear on this mission Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c said.

"They very well could." Sam said. "Those things could've already learned how to use the gate just from observing Daniel doing it. We don't know."

"If they did, the situation could get extremely complicated Colonel Carter." Teal'c said.

"I wouldn't worry about it muscles, I'm sure we could handle it." Vala replied. He bowed his head in her direction.

After a rushed visit to the armory, they entered the embarkation room just as the unstable vortex leaped from the Stargate.

"Good luck SG-1." Landry said as they all rushed through the gate.

They appeared on the other side amidst an extremely thick forest. It was so closed in that the MALP was barely not hitting the tree line sitting at the base of the steps. Mitchell, Teal'c, and Carter were scanning the area with their respective weapons. Mitchell and Carter with P-90's and Teal'c with a Staff Weapon.

"The area appears to be clear Colonel Mitchell." Teal'c said.

"Never hurts to be cautious." Mitchell said.

"Indeed." He replied.

"Yo Jackson… what exactly are we looking for here?" Mitchell asked.

"Well, as I've said, Lyfjaberg translates from Norse as "hill of healing". It was apparently built by the Asgard Idunn a-" Daniel started.

"That isn't what I asked. What… are… we… looking for?" Mitchell asked again lowering his weapon and turning around.

"Do you honestly not expect this kind of thing by now?" Vala asked.

"Well, assuming the hill part was meant to be taken literally… a big hill. I'm guessing it probably has some kind of device on top, the record on it wasn't very specific and didn't have any pictures." Daniel said ignoring her.

"Well, look at this Jackson; I thought all the books you read didn't have any pictures." Mitchell joked.

"I don't read many books. The ones I read have a ton of pictures though…" Vala said. "I like how they look…"

"Well, that's actually untrue, not all intellectual books don't contain-" Daniel started again.

"It was a joke Daniel, don't take me so literally." He replied.

"Well, there's a life at stake here. Is it really time to be joking?" Daniel replied.

"I believe Colonel Mitchell is merely trying to relieve tension Daniel Jackson." Teal'c said. "I do not think he means disrespect."

"Oh who are you kidding muscles, of course he does." Vala piped in.

"Look, this conversation is just wasting time." Sam said. "We should split up and try and find either the hill or some sort of settlement. If the Asgard came to help them, they should know where the device is."

"Fair enough, I'll take Teal'c and you can take Jackson and Vala." Mitchell said. "I'll head East and you can head West."

"Really? Do you hate me that much?" Vala asked.

"Alright, radio in if you find anything. We'll meet back here in say… two hours?" Sam said.

"Why is everyone ignoring me…?" Vala asked.

"If you have to ask Vala, then you just don't get it." Daniel replied.

"Or do I? I just got you to talk to me didn't I?" She teased. Daniel made to respond, but just grunted before looking expectantly at Sam. "Oh come on, would it help if I said sorry?"

"No." He replied without looking at her.

"That's what I thought…" She said frowning and heading after him.

"Got it. Let's get moving big guy." Mitchell replied turning to Teal'c. They headed in the forest to the right of the gate.

"C'mon Daniel, we've got some ground to cover." Sam said.

"Right behind you." Daniel said.

Sam, Daniel, and Vala entered the forest to the left side of the gate.

"This is so thick… how are we supposed to find anything in here?" Vala asked.

"Well, there has to be some kind of end to this forest… I mean, it can't go on forever." Sam said.

"Well, if there is some form of human civilization here then we have to assume that there is some kind of clearing…" Daniel said. "The records of Idunn helping the people on this planet date back to hundreds of years ago. The people of this planet had to have undergone some type of technological evolution since then. If so, then they would've cleared large areas of trees for towns and such."

"That's not exactly a relieve Daniel." Vala replied. "The trees were really close to the gate so we have to assume that the people here don't use it. If that's true… then isn't it also true that they could live absolutely nowhere near the gate?"

"Yes… that's true, but we don't really have much of a choice now do we?" Daniel asked.

"Couldn't we use one of those flying drone things?" She asked.

"We would've already if we could. The tree line hugs too close to the gate, it would crash right into the trees the second it got through. There isn't enough time to prepare a modified launch system…" Sam said. "So I guess we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way."

"This isn't going to be fun is it?" Vala asked.

"Well it's not exactly supposed to be… now is it?" Daniel asked. She merely sighed in response.

They moved through the trees in silence for several minutes.

"Mitchell, have you guys found anything?" Sam asked over the radio. Nothing returned but static. "Mitchell? Hello?"

There was still no answer.

"Maybe it's the trees." Daniel said.

"They would have to be really strange trees to block the signal; we haven't been apart all of that long either so it can't be distance..." Sam said.

"Well, there's one way to find out if these are normal trees…" Daniel said.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Well its obvious isn't it? Just shoot one." Vala said. She shrugged and aimed at a tree not far away before pulling the trigger on her P90 and putting a burst into it. A few splinters flew off, but other than that the tree was rather undamaged by the bullets. There were clinks as the bullets bounced off of nearby trees.

"Looks like you're right, these aren't normal trees." Sam said. "Maybe they're enhanced by some form of natural metal or other hardened material that's created when they grow…?"

"Well, we can't know for sure. But at least we know that these trees are probably what are messing with the radio signal." Daniel said.

"I'm not sure… what if they're in trouble?" Sam asked.

"Well it's not like we're going to find them in this mess." Vala said.

"I actually agree with her. We should just stick with the plan." Daniel said. "They can handle themselves, and there's no point in wasting time we could spend looking around to find a needle in a haystack. If they don't show up at the gate on time, then we know if we have a problem."

"If you say so." Sam said. "We should probably keep moving then."

So they did. They walked through the trees looking for anything they could find for almost an hour.

"Still nothing…" Sam said. "We should head back then, or we'll be late for the rendezvous. Maybe Mitchell and Teal'c found something…"

"Whoa, wait a second. Do you hear that?" Vala asked. Sam listened closely and then she heard a muffled noise, but she couldn't tell what it was.

"What is that?" Sam asked.

"Well, I don't know. Why are you asking me?" She replied.

"It's coming from over there." Daniel piped in pointing Northeast.

They headed in that direction with Sam in point holding up her P90. As they got closer, the sound started to become more recognizable.

"I think that's voices." Daniel whispered. "Maybe a town?"

They started to see a small bit of sunlight through the trees.

"Light. That's promising." Vala whispered. Suddenly, a smell entered all of their noses and they coughed silently and covered them against the smell as it nauseated them. "Oh god, what's that?"

"I think I know, and it's not good." Sam replied. She slowed down and cautioned them to get low as they reached the edge of the forest before looking around the trees and into the well-lit clearing. Just as she had thought, dozens of dead bodies littered the ground. Several men carrying staff weapons were dragging bodies and throwing them into a large fire. Suddenly, they spotted markings on their foreheads.

"Wait a second, are those…?" Vala started to ask.

"Jaffa? Yea, I think so." Daniel answered.

They examined the scene further and spotted the ashen remains of several houses and buildings and several more still burning and unleashing a torrent of smoke into the sky. Two Jaffa in armor were standing tall with staff weapons next to a man wearing extravagant clothes and a Goa'uld hand device. The man suddenly spoke with a deep and echoing voice signifying a Goa'uld.

"Jaffa, Kree! Finish depositing the bodies and then start showing displays of power in the other villages nearby. We will make these people obey again." He said. "The Tau'ri will regret this madness."

SG-1 shrank back behind the trees.

"Didn't we already deal with the Goa'uld?" Vala asked.

"Well there were bound to still be Goa'uld around. It's not like we exterminated them completely." Daniel said.

"Well, they are obviously still around." Sam said. "But Daniel, I thought you said this planet was under the protected planets treaty?"

"I was afraid about this happening…" Daniel said. "I've been getting reports that the Goa'uld are starting to become aware of the demise of the Asgard. The System Lords may be gone, but now the minor Goa'uld's are trying to take their place and power. Since the Asgard are gone, they don't need to obey the protected planets treaty anymore."

"So… as more of the planets that the protected planets treaty… well… protects fall to these Goa'uld, the more confident more of them will get and start trying to take those planets anyways." Sam said.

"If we don't step in and stop whatever Goa'uld this is here and now and this planet is taken, it will only be a matter of time before the rest of them start getting it into their heads that it's okay to spread out and seize planets." Daniel said agreeing. "We can't let that happen."

"So you're basically saying that we're going to have to take the place of the Asgard…" Sam replied.

"Well, we inherited their legacy right? So as I see it, we don't have much of a choice." Vala said. "The Tok'ra can't take care of everything."

"Alright, we have to try and stop him before he takes out any more villages in a show of power." Sam said checking the barrel of her P90. "There are a lot of Jaffa out there though, and we don't even know what Goa'uld this is yet."

"Give me the binoculars; I should be able to tell from the head symbols." Daniel said. Sam snapped them off of her belt and tossed them to him. He caught them and scooted up on his stomach to get a better angle before putting his glasses against the lenses and looking into the clearing. He played around with the zoom a bit before finding a Jaffa.

"See anything?" Sam asked.

"That's weird… that's the symbol of Yu." He replied.

"Me?"

"No, the Goa'uld. Haven't we had this conversation already?" Daniel asked.

"Yea, sorry." She replied. "But… Yu's dead, that's impossible."

Daniel looked around and spotted more Jaffa with several different symbols.

"Anubis, Apophis, Hathor…" He started reeling off.

"But we've already defeated all of them!" Vala said.

"Doesn't that mean these people belong to the Free Jaffa Nation?" Sam asked.

"It should…" He replied. "This Goa'uld, whoever he is… must've gathered them all with promises of grandeur. Other Goa'uld might have done the same. Teal'c mentioned something about Jaffa disappearing from their ranks to join minor Goa'uld's supporting a return to the way things were."

"Are they crazy?" Vala asked. "They _want _to be slaves?"

"You'd be surprised." Sam replied. "Some people just can't stand being in control, they'd rather someone else take care of it for them…"

"She's right…" Daniel said. "I'm going to just look at the Goa'uld himself now…"

He adjusted the zoom and found the Goa'uld in the scope. He spotted his forehead.

"Aha… looks like Geb." Daniel said.

"Never heard of him. Must be a loser." Vala replied.

"He's a minor Goa'uld. Even in Egyptian mythology he's a "loser". The original version of his name was "Gebeb" which roughly translated means "weak one" or "lame one"." He answered.

"It doesn't matter. What's important is that these Jaffa only must have recently joined up with him." Sam said checking her M9. "They shouldn't be very experienced with working together yet, so they should be rather easy to take. We're going to split up; I want you over there Vala…"

She pointed towards the western side of the burning village.

"…and you over there Daniel."

She pointed towards the eastern side.

"I'm going to throw a grenade, and when it blows up start firing." She said. "Try moving around a bit. It'll make them think there are more of us then there really is. Now let's get this done so we can get back to what we were really doing."

"Time is of the essence and all that?" Vala asked rhetorically.

"Yea, now move out."

"Yes mamn!" She said enthusiastically moving into the trees. Daniel nodded and headed off in the other direction.


End file.
